Now Playing

Wicked's Marissa Bode says every character is "canonically" gay in the movie

4 June 2025, 16:08

Wicked&squot;s Marissa Bode says every character is "canonically" gay in the movie — Wicked's Marissa Bode says every character is "canonically" gay in the movie. Picture: @marissa_edob via TikTok, Universal Pictures

By Sam Prance

Marissa Bode believes Elphaba, Glinda, Fiyero, Nessarose, Boq the Wizard and Madame Morrible are all queer.

Loading audio...

Happy Pride month! Wicked's Marissa Bode has spoken and she says all the film's characters are "canonically" queer.

Ever since the original Wicked book came out in 1995, there have been longstanding theories that Elphaba and Glinda are romantically in love with each other. Wicked author Gregory Maguire has since confirmed that the lesbian subtext was "intentional" and Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande have said that they both think Elphaba and Glinda are queer.

Now, Marissa Bode, who plays Nessarose, has entered the chat and argued that every character in the musical is gay.

Wicked fans have long believed that Elphaba and Glinda are queer. Picture: Alamy

Speaking with Into, Marissa, who is queer in real life, said: “The straights are gonna get mad at me for saying this...but canonically, for me, everybody in the cast, character-wise, is queer in my brain. Like, Elphaba and Galinda were a little too suspicious for me personally. In my brain, there is fruitiness happening there. That’s my personal opinion.”

Marissa then expended further on her comments on TikTok. In a viral video, she said: "These are my thoughts. Glinda is a lesbian, Elphaba is bisexual, Nessarose is bisexual, Fiyero is bisexual, Boq is questioning but queer in some way, Doctor Dillamond...gay".

Marissa continued: "Madame Morrible is a lesbian who was deeply in love once but something happened to her love which is now why she is the way that she is. The Wizards is also questioning but queer in some way."

Marissa captioned the viral TikTok: "These are based solely on the film but let's be real there's blatant queerness in the book as well."

Marissa Bode says every character in Wicked is gay

Speaking to Them in 2024, Gregory Maguire was asked if he created "sapphic tension" between Elphaba and Glinda on purpose. He replied: "That was intentional, and it was modest and restrained and refined in such a way that one could imagine that one of those two young women had felt more than the other and had not wanted to say it."

He added: "Perhaps because a novelist can't write every scene, perhaps when the lights were out and the novelist was out having a smoke in the back alley, the girls had sex in the bed on the way to the Emerald City. I wanted to propose this possibility, but I did not want to make a declarative statement."

So there we have it. Queer interpretations of Wicked are valid!