Michelle Yeoh doesn’t want her newborn grandchild to see “Wicked” — or at least, not until he’s older.
On the red carpet at the Los Angeles premiere of her Netflix series “The Brothers Sun,” Variety asked Yeoh what film of hers she would want her grandson, Maxime, to see first. Yeoh mused for a while, bringing up her upcoming project, Jon M. Chu’s “Wicked,” in which she plays school headmistress Madame Morrible, before ultimately deciding against it.
“I was thinking, I’ve done a musical, ‘Wicked.’ … I play a witch,” Yeoh said, referencing Madame Morrible’s status as a villain — and her desire for her grandson to not see her as one. “What is not going to traumatize them?” She concluded: “Maybe not one of my movies. Until they’re older.”
Yeoh then bashfully made a quip about audiences witnessing her singing in the upcoming “Wicked” films: “I say, ‘Good luck to you all.’”
The two-part “Wicked” is adapted from the Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was adapted from Gregory Maguire’s novel “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” (which was based off of L. Frank Baum’s novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”). It follows the ostracized, green-skinned Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and how she became the Wicked Witch of the West. The story specifically traces Elphaba’s complex relationship with classmate Glinda (Ariana Grande), who later becomes Glinda the Good.
Yeoh’s character, Madame Morrible, is the corrupt headmistress of Shiz University where Elphaba and Glinda meet, and has singing parts in popular songs from the musical such as “The Wizard and I” and “Thank Goodness.”
Yeoh previously confessed that she was insecure about the producers hearing her singing voice.
“I went in thinking this is going to be so scary — they’re going to recast me when they hear me,” she told Variety earlier this year. “But I am having so much fun!”
Netflix action comedy series “The Brothers Sun,” released on Thursday, sees Yeoh starring as Mama Sun, mother of the Sun brothers, Charles (Justin Chien) and Bruce (Sam Song Li). When the brothers’ father, a Taiwanese triad leader, is shot, Charles travels to Los Angeles to protect his mother and brother, only to find that trouble has followed them from Taiwan — and that his mother knows more than she lets on.