Marissa Bode thought she lost out on her dream role of Nessarose in “Wicked.” After a self tape and a series of callbacks, she stopped hearing back from casting. “I was like, ‘It’s dunzo for me.’ I was sad, so I made a little short film to distract myself,” Bode tells Variety.
Because it was prime spooky season in October, Bode centered the film around witches and magic. “It’s all about turning your bad luck into good luck. I create a little spell that good news will soon come knocking,” she recalls. “At the end of the video, you hear a knock at the door. I really do think I accidentally may have created a spell, because two days later, I heard back from casting.”
During her next Zoom call with director Jon M. Chu, he interrupted their chat to answer his door. Good news had come knocking, as stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo burst through the entryway holding a sign reading, “Welcome to Oz! Will you be our Nessa?”
“The crystal girlies are onto something,” Bode says, laughing at the idea of accidentally manifesting that life-changing moment.
Bode, who became disabled at age 11, makes history in the Universal movie as the first wheelchair user to play Nessa. “I’m genuinely so honored that it’s me doing that,” Bode, now 24, says. “Seeing somebody authentically cast like that on screen is just so important, especially in something so cool and so magical as ‘Wicked.’”
While Nessa uses a wheelchair in the stage musical, she eventually becomes able to walk when Elphaba (Erivo) casts an enchantment on her shoes. While Bode can’t reveal exactly how that plot point will be handled in the “Wicked Part Two,” she promises that it was done with care. “Casting authentically and showing an authentic disabled person is very important, but it’s also very important how we’re shown,” she says. “I am very happy with the changes that have been made, for sure.”
Universal Pictures
Of course, that two-film structure has been much-discussed online, with many questioning why the story needs to be stretched. For her part, Bode is thrilled with the opportunity to add more dimension to Elphaba’s younger sister.
“It definitely helps give her more of an arc, because she’s not just the bratty little spoiled sister,” she says, explaining that the extra length gave the creatives a chance to explore character’s relationships in depth. “Obviously, it’s a beautiful musical and I love the stage musical, but you don’t really get to see little moments in the bond between the two sisters very much, or just their love for one another. You get to see that more in the film. And I think that’s really important, because it makes what happens in the second film all the more devastating. It humanizes Nessa as character, and shows how much she cares about people. I think it was a great decision.”
As for her next roles, Bode hopes to play characters whose disability doesn’t define them. She recalls a recent conversation with a friend, who told her, “It’s not like you wake up every day like, ‘I’m gonna eat my disabled cereal and get out of my disabled bed, go on my disabled wheels for the day and go to my disabled work today!” She laughs, adding, “I’m just existing, because that’s just reality for me.”
While Bode is grateful that her casting as Nessa will create an authentic portrayal of disabled people on screen, she’s got even bigger goals in the long run. “I think feeling less alone can help propel other disabled people to take action and feel like they can speak out about issues regarding accessibility and ableism that are unfortunately still prevalent in society today,” she says. “Representation is just the very tip of the iceberg when it comes to disability rights and the disability movement as a whole.”
Source Agencies
