Jun 2, 2026 · 1 hr 2 min · 10 segments
What makes a person wicked? Not only wicked, but positively horrendible? Raymond and Sophie dive into the recent film adaptation of the classic Stephen Schwartz musical Wicked, based on The Wizard of…
Raymond O'ConnellHostUm, but we talked about how the Wicked Witch of the West, there are several things that are really true, open questions about her, including why does she care about the ruby slippers? Why does she want them from Dorothy? Why does she say that she used to kill Dorothy in a delicate way? All of these big questions, right? We don't know what
And so I think it makes some sense that when Gregory Maguire set out to write a novel about a Wizard of Oz character that he picked the Wicked Witch of the West.
And it makes some sense to me that the adaptation of that into a musical got really popular.
Originally, when I was hearing about the premise of this, of Wicked, I wasn't particularly interested in it because I've just heard so many of these things done before of rehashing fairy tales.
But actually, it turns out that this particular fairy tale may actually be appropriate for this kind of revisionist writing.
Because just like I was saying in the previous episode about The Wizard of Oz, Frank F. Baum, L.F. Baum, was writing a novel deliberately with the intention of writing a modern fairy tale with all the nightmares taken out of it.
And that's why you get this story with some very dynamic imagery, but not a lot of explanation for why anything exists.
And Gregory Maguire, he talked about the inspiration for the novel, and he was primarily interested in...
And he speculated that maybe the way villains are formed is perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Um, but we talked about how the Wicked Witch of the West, there are several things that are really true, open questions about her, including why does she care about the ruby slippers? Why does she want them from Dorothy? Why does she say that she used to kill Dorothy in a delicate way? All of these big questions, right? We don't know what
And so I think it makes some sense that when Gregory Maguire set out to write a novel about a Wizard of Oz character that he picked the Wicked Witch of the West.
And it makes some sense to me that the adaptation of that into a musical got really popular.
Originally, when I was hearing about the premise of this, of Wicked, I wasn't particularly interested in it because I've just heard so many of these things done before of rehashing fairy tales.
But actually, it turns out that this particular fairy tale may actually be appropriate for this kind of revisionist writing.
Because just like I was saying in the previous episode about The Wizard of Oz, Frank F. Baum, L.F. Baum, was writing a novel deliberately with the intention of writing a modern fairy tale with all the nightmares taken out of it.
And that's why you get this story with some very dynamic imagery, but not a lot of explanation for why anything exists.
And Gregory Maguire, he talked about the inspiration for the novel, and he was primarily interested in...
And he speculated that maybe the way villains are formed is perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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