Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, More With Theater Backgrounds

Before Ariana Grande became the superstar who sells out worldwide arenas, she started her career at local theaters in Boca Raton, Fla. At 15, she made her Broadway debut in 13: The Musical in 2008. Grande was part of the original cast, which consisted entirely of teenagers. The show, directed by Jeremy Sams, ran for three months at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. There, she met Liz Gillies (Dynasty), whom she later co-starred with on Nickelodeon’s Victorious from 2010-13. 

While 13 is the only Broadway show she’s appeared in so far, she would like to return to the stage. “That’s where I started,” Grande said during a recent interview on the Today show to promote Wicked: For Good. “It would be a dream to find the right thing to come back to, to be on stage.”

Cynthia Erivo made her Broadway debut in 2015 in The Color Purple revival, after first playing Celie in the show’s 2013 London production at the Menier Chocolate Factory. She reprised the role on Broadway through 2017, earning a Tony for best leading actress in a musical, as well as a Grammy for the cast album and a Daytime Emmy for a performance on Today. Erivo has since earned three Oscar nominations — two for 2019’s Harriet (best actress and best original song) and one for 2024’s Wicked — leaving her just an Oscar shy of EGOT status.

Originally from London, Erivo made her West End debut in 2011 for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. She is set to return for a one-woman version of Dracula at the Noël Coward Theatre starting Feb. 4, 2026.

Jonathan Bailey also began his career as a child actor, making his West End debut at 8 years old in Les Misérables as Gavroche. The Bridgerton star went on to act in other plays at London theaters, including The York Realist in 2018, Othello in 2013 and Cock in 2022. Bailey received rave reviews for his performance as Jamie in the 2018 West End revival of Company. For his role, he won a Laurence Olivier Award for best actor in a supporting role in a musical the following year. Earlier this year, he was in Richard II playing the title role, which concluded its run at the Bridge Theatre in May. He has yet to make his Broadway debut. 

Jeff Goldblum has been on both Broadway and the West End in several different productions. Before he became the Wizard in Wicked: For Good, he made his Broadway debut in the Tony Award-winning musical Two Gentlemen of Verona in 1971. Then he went on to star in The Moony Shapiro Songbook in 1981 and The Pillowman in 2005. Goldblum, most recently on Broadway, appeared in Seminar in 2011-12. Like his Wicked co-stars, the Jurassic Park actor has also had West End credits, appearing in Speed-the-Plow in 2008 and The Prisoner of Second Avenue in 2010. 

Ethan Slater (aka Boq) originated the role of SpongeBob in SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical in 2017, which was also his Broadway debut. Slater’s portrayal of the beloved animated character earned him a Tony Award nomination for best leading actor in a musical, and he also won a Drama Desk Award. He returned to Broadway with Spamalot, where he played the Historian and Prince Herbert, from 2023-24, and his girlfriend and Wicked co-star Grande would frequently attend to support. He has also appeared in several off-Broadway productions, including Baghdaddy (2017), Assassins (2020-2022), Camelot (2022), Edge of the World (2024) and Marcel on the Train (2025), the latter of which he co-wrote with Marshall Pailet.

Academy Award-nominated actor Colman Domingo surprised Wicked fans in October when it was revealed he was playing the Cowardly Lion in Wicked: For Good. However, his time in theater dates back decades, as his credits include the play Well (2005) — and his Broadway debut — as well as the musical Passing Strange (2008) and The Scottsboro Boys (2011), also a musical, for which he received a Tony Award nomination. In 2014, he reprised the role in a West End production and received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination. He then extended his talents to writing. In 2018, he wrote the book for the Broadway musical Summer: The Donna Summer Musical. He also played Billy Flynn in two separate engagements of Chicago in 2010 and 2011.

The Sing Sing star’s off-Broadway work consists of his 2009 one-man autobiographical play A Boy and His Soul and Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole, which he co-wrote with Patricia McGregor and that ran at the New York Theatre Workshop earlier this year.

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Dulcibear, Elphaba and Nessarose’s talking grizzly bear nanny in Wicked: For Good, is voiced by Tony nominee Sharon D. Clarke. She’s a three-time Olivier Award winner for her roles in The Amen Corner, Caroline, or Change and Death of a Salesman. In 2021, Clarke reprised her role as Caroline Thibodeaux in Caroline, or Change on Broadway (which was also her debut), earning her a Tony and Grammy nomination. The following year, Death of a Salesman also transferred to Broadway.

The actress, who plays Glinda’s friend at Shiz University ShenShen and is a part of the popular clique with Pfannee (Bowen Yang), has appeared in the 2015 production of Hangmen on the West End, which The Banshees of Inisherin‘s writer-director Martin McDonagh wrote and Matthew Dunster directed.

While Alice Fearn appears as Glinda’s mother in the two Wicked films, her connection to the musical runs much deeper: she played Elphaba in the West End production from 2017 to 2019. Her other theater credits include Les Misérables, Oliver!, Shrek: The Musical, The Woman in White, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Come From Away.