There’s a reason we love all those stories about iconic rock and pop hits that were dashed off in five minutes, or nearly tossed on the trash heap before being rescued and surging to the top of the charts. People‘s 2025 Sexiest Man Alive Jonathan Bailey clearly knows this, and on Thursday night (Nov. 6) the co-star of Wicked: For Good unleashed an all-time classic version of that tall tale during NBC’s Wicked: One Wonderful Night prime-time special.
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“I’d sent a tape… crazy tape,” Bailey said of his self-tape audition for the movie as some of his castmates — Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jeff Goldblum, Michele Yeoh and Ethan Slater — sat around discussing the film during the two-hour show. “I did ‘Dance Through Life,’” he said of his karaoke bid to land the role of Fiyero; Bailey performed the song in last year’s first part of the two-part Wizard of Oz-inspired film.
“But I did it at the five-minute call when I was doing a play. I’m worried about this sub-section – now we’re going to subtly cut to it,” he said as producers did just what he anticipated and bumped to the lo-fi dressing room karaoke-style tape in which Bailey croons the song while waving around a pair of sunglasses. At one point, the super-relaxed-seeming Bailey belts a line and then gets a “five minutes” call alert that he is expected on stage momentarily for a performance of the 2022 revival of the play Cock on London’s West End.
“I can’t believe you did it on your five-minute call. How on Earth did you even have the [time]?” fellow stage veteran Erivo wondered. “Well, you know, it’s such a… it’s like, you sort of go, ‘it’s now,’” Bailey responded. “Let’s play it. Let’s just do it. And I sang it, and it was the only way I was going to be able to do that tape.” Watch Bailey talk about his audition here.
The NBC special was accompanied by a just-released soundtrack, Wicked: One Wonderful Night (Live) — The Soundtrack, which features 10 live recordings from Erivo, Grande, Goldblum, Slater, Bowen Yang, Marissa Bode and others singing such iconic songs as “Defying Gravity,” “Popular” and “The Wizard and I” accompanied by a 37-piece orchestra.
Wicked: For Good will hit theaters on Nov. 21.
