'Wicked: For Good' director reveals why he opted for demure approach with 'As Long As You're Mine'

Jon M. Chu, the director of the Wicked movies, has revealed why the famous song, As Long As You’re Mine, in Wicked: For Good is not intimate from the beginning.

For those unaware, As Long As You’re Mine is a duet song between Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba and Jonathan Bailey’s Prince Fiyero in the recently released sophomore part of Wicked.

In the romantic and emotional song, both characters show their deep love for each other and desire to stay together even though their path to love is swamped with thorns.

Notably, in the stage musical, Elphaba and Prince Fiyero knelt down, hugged and cried together for 3 minutes and 46 seconds, but Chu was aware of the fact that this staging would not sit well with the audience on the big screen and he persuaded Bailey and Erivo to take a more graceful approach instead.

The 46-year-old American film director opened up to Entertainment Weekly about why he opted for a more demure approach.

He said, "I just felt like, 'Is this movie the type of movie where you just sit and stare at each other and sing?' I was like, 'There's nothing happening.’ And passion can only happen.... They didn't have time to.... We need a scene where they go out on a date or something. How do they know each other?"

Chu shared that he had a long conversation with Bailey after this particular thought crossed his mind. “It was about 'What do you see that's beautiful about her? She cracked your brain open in movie one, and you've been living in this lie. You've been watching her have this beautiful confidence that you don't have. What happens when you go to her nest?'"

The In the Heights director went on to add that he and the Bridgerton star assumed that Prince Fiyero would "look at her nest and see how beautiful of a place she made. That's something Cynthia brought to this character that none of us were thinking: dignity. She's like, 'I would have a home, I would make it smell nice. I would put my hair up.' She's not just a caricature that we're making fun of in learning the backstory. It's not fan fiction; this is a real character to her."

During the rehearsals, Bailey made some changes to the moment even before the song started and at the exact juncture when Prince Fiyero takes off Elphaba's cape.

"He was like, 'I want to take off her cape so she can feel what it feels like to let go.’ And this moment was way longer than what they did in the film. I mean, it was f***ing 20 minutes. They just stared at each other,” Jon M. Chu mentioned.