‘Wicked’ star Marissa Bode fell backward in her wheelchair while filming

Nessa has something to confess-a…

Marissa Bode, who is making her screen debut in Wicked, took a little spill while making the movie adaptation of the hit Broadway musical. “I did fall backward one of the times,” Bode says with a sheepish grin while discussing filming her dance sequence with Ethan Slater’s Boq in the “Dancing Through Life” number.

“It was really epic,” she adds, while Slater says concurrently, “It was really quiet.”

Bode thought the mishap was funny, but the rest of the Wicked team were concerned she might have genuinely hurt herself. “I was laughing a lot,” she admits. “Everyone else around me looked so concerned.”

“When anyone falls, it’s the most terrifying thing,” Slater adds. “But there was also something disconcerting about how much [Marissa was] laughing as it happened. We were like, ‘That’s got to mean that it’s bad.'”

It turns out that Bode is a bit of a thriller seeker, explaining how much she loved doing the wire work where Elphaba makes Nessa and her wheelchair fly into the air by accident. “I am supposed to be scared in the scene itself,” she notes. “And every time the camera would cut, immediately after just freaking out in the air, I was like, ‘Let’s run it back. Let’s go again.’ It was so much fun.”

Despite her tumble, Slater and Bode execute a lovely sequence of choreography while dancing in the Ozdust ballroom during the “Dancing Through Life” number. Slater, for one, was glad to have the opportunity for lots of rehearsal (and his nerves on the day made him more concerned about Bode’s fall than he might otherwise have been). “Learning choreography is always a scary, challenging thing,” he says. “Because it doesn’t always feel super natural. But what was really nice about this time was that we had some time to work together and learn about our characters through the movement. It informed the rest of the movie in a lot of ways.”

For example, the scene was crucial in helping to establish Boq and Nessa’s true feelings for each other. Boq initially asks Nessa out in an attempt to impress Glinda (Ariana Grande), but then he ends up telling her she’s beautiful and inviting her to dance. But is the gesture motivated by pity or, worse, a desire to capture Glinda’s attention?

“It’s such a pivotal point in the movie when they form a friendship,” adds Bode. “To Nessa, maybe a little bit more than a friendship. But what’s established in that moment carries through the rest of the film.”

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For his part, Slater is adamant that this spark of connection isn’t about pity — explaining that he found something different through their choreography. “That’s actually a big moment in the Ozdust is realizing that what he’s done in asking her out as a friend could seem as though he were taking pity on her,” he says. “There’s a moment of realization of, ‘Oh, that’s actually not the right way to treat people, and I didn’t mean it that way.’ There’s a genuine connection in that moment that I’m really grateful for. There’s a real bond that they form. It just means a different thing to each of them.”

To find out where that bond goes, audiences will have to wait for the second film to be released in 2025. Directed by Jon M. Chu, Wicked the movie stars Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Grande as Glinda. Also featuring Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Bailey, and Bowen Yang, the first part of Wicked is currently playing in theaters.