Jeff Goldblum had reason to sing What Is This Feeling? while filming “Wicked,” given the emotional moment he had on set.
The actor, who confirmed that he will play the role of the Wizard in the upcoming two-part musical film, broke down in tears as he recalled a childhood fear of witches.
“I shouldn’t talk about it, but one day I was filming and found myself crying in fear. You know, a childhood fear came back to me,” Goldblum, 70, said on Thursday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
“I told (co-star) Cynthia Erivo, I said, ‘You know, I’m remembering my first dream that I had.’ And my first dream was that I was tied to a tree stump, and a witch, because I had seen ‘Snow White,’ I think, also with a very scary witch queen, had tied me to a tree stump, and I thought (she) me. I was going to chop off his head.”
The young Goldblum’s dream witch was also repeating the word “peaches”, and Goldblum told host Jimmy Kimmel that his older brothers taunted him with the word “peaches” for weeks.
“Witches scare me,” he concluded.
Goldblum also revealed in Thursday’s interview that he tried to watch “The Wizard of Oz” with his two young children recently, but they couldn’t see the 1939 film. “It was too scary for them,” he said. “That witch is terrifying. Daisy Hamilton. Frightening. You should see our witches. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, very good.
In the “Wicked” films, a two-part adaptation of the Broadway hit of the same name, Erivo stars as Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West, while Grande plays Glinda, the future Good Witch.
The film’s cast also includes Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Bowen Yang and new Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh. The first “Wicked” movie will be released on November 27, 2024, and the second is scheduled for December 25, 2025. Deadline reports.
