For virtuoso casting director Bernie Telsey, the long-awaited film adaptation of Wicked offered the chance to revisit a world he helped shape decades earlier when he shepherded the show through its Broadway debut, casting Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel in their iconic roles.
Through two decades and countless tours, the Telsey Office has handled all of the U.S. casting for Wicked on stage, but the transition to screen provided an opportunity to reimagine familiar characters within another context. Telsey recently spoke with Boxoffice Pro for the cover story of our November 2025 print edition. In celebration of Universal Pictures’ Wicked: For Good arriving in theaters on November 21, here is our full conversation with the casting wizard.
You’ve been with this story and these characters throughout their journey from stage to screen. What’s this process been like for you?
What was so wonderful about working on the movie after having been part of the casting for the Broadway show—and still working on the Broadway show and the tours and all of that—was just looking at it from another angle with the new creative team.
It was opened up to all of these other characters that I know from the book, but we didn’t have in the musical. These are characters we’ve talked about or who have lived in our universe; we just never got to cast them before. That was a joy. There were so many things that were a joy. We don’t get to cast just 12 dancers; we get to cast 200. We’re confined to a limit on Broadway. It was so much fun for Tiffany [Little Canfield], the other casting director, and me. We just got to play.
Also, because of the nature of Elphaba and Galinda; everybody knows who they are. Everybody knows the Broadway show or the score. There’s an expectation, which made it hard. Jon [M. Chu], Marc Platt, Universal, and the producers—[composer/lyricist] Stephen Schwartz—everybody was like, “We want to see everyone and anyone.” It could be an unknown out of college. It could be a star. It didn’t matter. There was no pressure whatsoever, which allowed us to really use the casting process to hone in on Jon’s vision and Mark’s vision and Stephen’s vision. And to be surprised.
Out come these two amazing actresses, Ariana and Cynthia. You saw it the minute they came in and auditioned. It was so fun, because it was like raising a child and then getting to be a grandparent. I was looking at it from a different point of view. I don’t have to live with it 24 hours a day, like we do with the Broadway show. It sounds so funny, saying it for the first time, but that’s what it felt like. I know what this is, but it’s fresh and new in its own way. We just love working with Jon. Tiffany and I got to do In the Heights with him, and we’ve done many movies with Marc. It felt very comfortable, because people really trust each other and can talk to each other. It’s not every day we get to work on the stage show and the movie, so I felt very, very lucky.
When did you start the casting process?
We did a lot during Covid, at least on the [casting of] Elphaba and Galinda. We were just starting to collect tapes. At the beginning of 2021, when Covid was sort of ending, we started doing sessions with Jon. Tiffany and I would go to LA, he would come to New York, and we would do sessions in New York with people that we wanted him to see, that we had liked from our own pre-screens or our own videotapes. Then we started seeing people.
We tried to narrow down who [Jon] wanted to spend time with in LA. We flew some people in from wherever they were. It was a “work sessions-slash-callbacks” kind of thing. That’s when we saw Ariana and Cynthia. We did not see them together [at first]. But, boy, they were great. I remember it vividly. They were really strong. It was very easy for Stephen to love them, for Universal to love them. We were always doing Wizard and Morrible [casting] lists in our minds, but we never started making calls and offers until after we had the witches. Then we went full-drive with Boq, Fiyero, and Nessarose. It still took a whole other year to [complete the casting], but it all started to come together [when we cast Ariana and Cynthia].
You’ve talked about how your time casting Rent taught you to be a detective. How did your investigative skills help you bring this cast and ensemble together?
In some ways, we have more tools now than we did when I was first doing Rent. There’s something called the internet that we didn’t have then. We only had flyers and open calls that nobody really wanted to show up for. [With Wicked,] we had the internet that we could reach out through. Let’s take Nessarose, for instance. We could [contact] all the organizations, groups, and socials to help get the word out. There might be an actress out there that we don’t know. Even with Galinda, no matter how many musicals we cast for Broadway or movies, it doesn’t mean we know every younger soprano. There were people just graduating.
Sure, we can go after the main schools that we know, but what I learned from Rent is that you never know where you’re going to find someone. Just when you think you’ve looked under every rock, there’s a shell you should look under. You always have to be reminded that you can’t just look under rocks. To continue using that analogy, you have to look under the shell, or under the bottle, or whatever else might be on that beach. You always find a nice piece of beach glass somewhere, and that’s like finding an actor. You just never know where they’re going to be.
There are the normal ways that you know, but then there are ways to be surprised. When Tiffany and I went to London—we know a lot of the London talent, but I don’t know the working London talent like I know the U.S. talent, because we’re not seeing them on a daily basis. To go there and do weeks and weeks of dancing auditions really uses the process of casting rather than saying, “I know who I already love from these 12 Broadway shows.” To be open and do dance auditions [meant that] the experience that we are both having—the dancer and the casting director—determined who [choreographer] Chris [Scott] would see or Jon would see. A match is going to be made.
That is thrilling, because I can’t even say I knew all the agents that I should call that I have a history with. We went and saw any dance agent or anyone that was submitted. You know enough after doing this for a while that just when you think you’re done, you’re not done. Because someone’s going to ask, “Anybody else?” Those are the famous things, which are wonderful, challenging, and collaborative, but you always have to be ahead of where to look next. This movie allowed us to really do that because of the largeness of it, because of the expectations, and because we had the time. You don’t always have the time. You usually get eight to 10 weeks. They really allowed the time. That’s why we found who we found, from Cynthia and Ariana down to the dancers. None of it was immediate. Not one discussion about anybody was quick—in a good way!
So much of your work happens early on in the process; what’s it like for you to sit down in a theater and see it all come together on the screen?
It’s so scary because you’re not there for the shoot. Sure, we visited the set; I saw two scenes get shot, but you’re not there on a daily basis like so many of the other designers. They’re living it. So it’s frightening, and it’s thrilling. Luckily, my kids are not on stage in any of their school plays, but I would think it’s like that. You’re looking at one of your kids, and you really hope they’re going to be good.
The first time I watched it, no matter how much I’d seen Jon’s storyboards, to see it was unbelievable. Everything I dreamed of or imagined, it was beyond. How did I get lost in it when I know how it’s made? That was the best thing: I was so lost in the story, which is what I love about going to the movies. In my 20s, going to see Kramer vs. Kramer or any of those kinds of movies and just getting lost in them. I was so lost in this movie. You forget that you worked on it.
I think the first time I saw it was at a screening for some of the Broadway alumni, because I wasn’t in L.A. when Marc was doing early team screenings. Then to go see it with my family or friends or the general public and the rest of the people in the casting office—the reactions are overwhelming. I broke my arm about two weeks after [Part 1] opened, and I was in the hospital. The nurses and doctors asked what I do, and I would be like, “I cast Wicked the movie.” All these people, of different age ranges, were just gaga. They weren’t in the business by any means. It was nice to talk to people who had seen it and had the same experience that we do. And there’s another one! It’s unbelievable. I feel like next I’m going to have to do Wicked: On Ice.
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