Jeff Goldblum has said that playing The Wizard of Oz in the new movie adaptation of stage musical smash hit Wicked gave him an insight into human nature.
Directed by Crazy Rich Asians and In The Heights director John M Chu, Wicked tells the origin stories of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, from movie classic The Wizard of Oz.
Pop superstar Ariana Grande plays Glinda and London-born actress Cynthia Erivo plays Elphaba, with Jurassic Park and Independence Day star Goldblum making a star turn as the flamboyant but sinister Wizard.
It looks like a role he was born to play.
Review: Wicked will put a spell on you
"He’s an interesting character - he is charismatic to the extent that he has a cult of followers around him but he is a conman and a charlatan who creates an avatar that protects his authentic self in some ways . . . hey! Maybe I do that in ways that maybe I should examine a little more closely.
"In what ways am I not authentic and create a false face? That would be an interesting thing to look into. But he’s certainly sinister. Just like bad people throughout history, he demonises others in order to enhance his own power and that’s not nice and he traffics in animal cruelty, which is horrible."
He added, "He’s complicated. Everybody in this movie is complicated, a little bit dark, a little bit light."
And it’s the Wizard who utters the most chilling line in the movie when he says, "The best way to bring folk together is to give them a real good enemy."
"It is chilling," says Goldblum. "Like everyone else, the Wizard has this quirk of brain that he justifies everything he does and that it is the right and righteous thing to do, odd creatures that we are.
"He thinks he’s bringing people together and he has I guess he had made Oz prosperous but to do that he creates a common enemy so that the people can feel united and that’s an ugly, ugly thing to do.
"Since the beginning of time, human beings have done that. Americans have done it to the indigenous population after Europeans first settled the country and it’s done now and it’s not good."
Wicked is in cinemas now
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