There have been over 45 Elphabas and over 35 Galindas, including Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in “Wicked” and “Wicked: For Good,” as of this counting. A lot of them have traveled to Oz through the casting office of Bernard Telsey and Tiffany Little Canfield, who have not only maintained the yellow brick road to “Wicked” on Broadway, but saw hundreds of actors and dancers for hundreds of parts in the two part (so far) adaptation by director Jon M. Chu.

The challenge of casting the “Wicked” films was therefore one of both incredible breadth and depth, and luckily, Telsey and Canfield were able to take the time to run a wide search for the leads, ensemble, all the way down to the smallest voice actor parts. Counting reshoots for the second film, they were casting “Wicked” for over two years. Accordingly, there wasn’t a singular moment where the clouds parted, and they knew who would hold the pointy hat, but a gradual, growing sense of rightness.

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“I think it was really about the finals where they were doing more than one song, more than one scene, and really engulfing themselves into the whole process of who these women can be and showing you all of those colors,” Telsey told IndieWire. “I get so emotional when I think about [Erivo’s] audition because she stood there like Joan of Arc, strong as she can be, and yet was so naked and so vulnerable. You saw how [Elphaba could be both].”

Canfield recalled that, at the end of Grande’s audition, at the very end of her last chemistry pairing, she did a totally Galinda-ified flourish that cemented the confidence the team already had in her. “ She went over, and she took her eyelashes off and stuck them on the mirror [of the dance studio] — and that just felt like we’ve got Glinda,” Canfield said. “It’s so funny and unique and yet also has its hidden kind of power to it. She had proven herself through the whole audition, but that was a really special moment where we felt like we’re all in this together and, here: We’ve got it.”

But much of the casting work on both films were able the subtle worldbuilding of casting — seeing legions of dancers (many London-based, where the films shot) and figuring out not just who could roll with the choreography, but how to divide people up so that the denizens of Emerald City looked different from those of Munchkinland, and so the viewer could always grasp the feeling of a setting through the actors themselves.

“ You’re going to need hundreds of people. The other [roles] we’re going down to one. Like even with one line parts, I’m still going down to one person, but for the dancers, I know I need hundreds of people. And how do you start when we don’t have the sets built?,” Canfield said. “[Choreographer Christopher Scott] wanted 80, but the COVID guy said we could only have 70 dancers, a group every two hours. For a full week. So, like, we’d be on a Tuesday and [Scott’s] like, ‘I want more whackers. Or what about tap? Can we see older dancers?’ And then I’d be scheduling with my team in LA and in London, going, ‘Let’s get in some actors over 50 for this hour,’ and we’re rescheduling to try to fit in everything. But you just have to start.”

‘Wicked: For Good‘©Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection

One fringe benefit of embarking on such a massive casting process is that Telsey, Canfield, and their team already had the right sides to read everybody. “We knew the scenes that were the most important, and we could use those even before we could let the screenplay out — obviously, all that’s pretty secretive, and you’re usually having to have fake sides. In this case, we could use the Broadway material,” Canfield said. “That gave [us] a backbone of which were the emotional songs, or the tough songs, to sing. We’re constantly doing this for Broadway. So even though it’s obviously a different pool of people, we also got to see all the wonderful Broadway actresses we know so well, whether they’re in ‘Wicked’ or any of the other musicals, we got to see so many of them for this process.”

And many of the people that Telsey and Canfield saw, they could find things for — dancers who ended up reading as actors and vice-versa — and the sheer number of people they saw allowed the casting team to really get creative and experiment with how they would fill it each piece of the Ozian puzzle in both “Wicked” films. “ We had the time to really play around and show people to Jon and show ’em again weeks later, that kind of a thing,” Telsey said.

As is perhaps fitting, Telsey and Canfield take as much pride in getting the small roles perfect as they do guiding the search for a new generation’s Elphaba and Glinda. One of their favorite roles is the ticket taker at the Munchkin train station, who denies Boq (Ethan Slater) an escape from his home and from the attention of Nessarose (Marissa Bode).

“Adam Pierce. He’s a Steven Schwartz alum, a musical theater performer. And then in the midst of a [shooting] break, he had a health emergency but was able to recover in time to be in the film, because the length of filming was quite long. I’m just so happy that worked out because when I heard he had been ill — I mean, when you look at him, how do you find someone else like him?” Canfield said.

“ I love that little scene. I love that little scene,” Telsey added.

In the video above, spend a clock-tick watching how Telsey, Canfield, and their team filled up the land of Oz in “Wicked: For Good.”

*“Wicked: For Good” is now in theaters. *