They’re not lion’ to us, but they’re not exactly telling the truth, either. With a little over a month to go until Wicked: For Good premieres in theaters, Universal has yet to reveal who will voice the Cowardly Lion. The character has already been shown in trailers alongside glimpses of Dorothy, Toto, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man — all evoking classic imagery from the 1939 Wizard of Oz without giving too much away about the characters’ surprise-twist identities.
The lion barely appears in Act Two of Wicked the stage musical — you only see a big talk-like rope coming from stage left — but with the stage show split into two entire movies with big CGI budgets and run times to fill, the role of the Cowardly Lion begs for a stunt cast. In an interview with Deadline, Jon M. Chu said he DM’d a “celebrated actor” on Instagram to ask if he’d do the role: “I was like, ‘It’s not a ton of lines, but maybe you have a little time. I know you’re busy. I’ll come to you.’ He was like, ‘Why the fuck not, let’s go!’ And then we went ahead and recorded the lines.”
“Man, wait until the red carpet when the actor who gave us the Cowardly Lion’s voice steps foot on it. It’ll be wild,” he continued.
A “celebrated actor”? Who’s active on Instagram? Whose appearance on the Wicked: For Good red carpet will be “wild”? Who could this shy and enigmatic apex predator be?
The first step in this type of casting investigation is to mark the role “safe” from James Kimberley Corden’s involvement (real middle name). The theatrically trained Brit tends to pop up in musicals like a lantern fly, appearing in live-action adaptations like Into the Woods, The Prom, and fittingly, as a very large CGI cat in 2019’s Cats. Chu does, in fact, follow Corden on Instagram. But I do not believe a crowd will go “wild” for Corden on a red carpet. The most telling evidence that it won’t be Corden, though, is that in 2021, over 10,000 people signed a Change.org petition begging Chu to “keep James Corden out of Wicked the movie.” At this point, it would just be a slap in the face to fans.
The next step is to rule out other major musical-theater actors. Hugh Jackman and Neil Patrick Harris have Instagram presences, but Chu doesn’t follow either of them, and vice versa. Jonathan Groff comes to mind, but that would run the risk of making the lion distractingly sexy, and besides, he doesn’t have Instagram (although Chu does follow a Groff stan account).
We need to think bigger. Who does Chu follow who would cause this sort of reaction? There’s Josh Gad, who’s big in the animated-voices game, plus he’ll be working with Ariana Grande and Chu in an upcoming Oh, the Places You’ll Go! adaptation. Chu also follows Jason Momoa, who would be a huge “whoa!” moment on the red carpet and seems like the kind of guy who lives his life one “Why the fuck not?” message at a time. But neither of these guys have the level of esteem that Chu’s quote suggests.
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Maybe we need to go gayer. Frankie Grande would be a newsworthy “WTF” stunt cast because of his sister, but nothing about him screams “celebrated actor.” Ben Platt has a great Cowardly Lion voice and vibe, but I’m thinking he isn’t a huge enough deal right now. Ben Whishaw? Not on Instagram and surely a Paddington conflict of interest. Chu doesn’t follow theater guys Jim Parsons and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, nor does he follow mega-box-office draw Pedro Pascal.
That leaves us with two strong possible contenders (according to an informal survey with my colleagues), the first of which is Tom Hanks. Hanks is about as celebrated an actor as an actor can be, he’s got that folksy Oz vibe down pat, and Chu follows him. Still, I’m not totally convinced by this argument. Mostly because of the timeline. An unclear amount of time passes in Oz between the first and second Wicked films, but it can’t have been more than a decade, and that lion, spoiler alert, was a cub in the first movie. I’m not a zoologist, but I think the Cowardly Lion being voiced by one of the most famous voices in the world, belonging to a 69-year-old actor, would be a distraction and wouldn’t totally line up with the part. This timeline issue also rules out esteemed actors of a certain age like Ian McKellen, Morgan Freeman, Dick Van Dyke, and Joel Grey.
The prevailing guess, amongst my colleagues and on much of the internet, is Lin-Manuel Miranda. Miranda is already immersed in CGI singing-and-dancing lion culture, and he is on record saying that he wanted to be in the first Wicked movie really badly, but Chu thought his presence would be too much of a distraction. He’s also someone who would definitely say, “Why the fuck not, let’s go!” One prevailing piece of evidence in Lin’s favor is that he went for dinner with Chu, Cynthia Erivo, and Ariana Grande in London when the movie was about to start filming. In a photo from it, he’s wearing a Luigi hat: green, for Wicked, with an L, for Lion?
Here he is festooned in yellow-brick-road gold, right down to the boots.
And he loves a good Emerald City green.
You heard it here Brrrst.
