Marissa Bode Teases A Major Change For Nessarose In Wicked: Part 2

Sadly, viewers will have to wait more than one short day to see the conclusion of Wicked in theaters, with Part 2 premiering on Nov. 21, 2025. But if you need something to theorize about in the meantime, one of the film’s stars has teased her storyline in the second half — and it won’t necessarily be what fans of the original Broadway musical expect.

Spoilers ahead. If you’re familiar with the Broadway show, you know Nessarose has quite the arc in Act 2. She succeeds her late father as the governor of Munchkinland, where she serves as an oppressive ruler and even uses Boq as her servant.

Nessarose also resents that Elphaba has never used her magic to “rescue” her little sister. So, Elphaba casts a spell that enables her to walk — which does work but ultimately prompts a sequence of events that ends with Nessarose alone and Boq turning into the Tin Man.

Marissa Bode, who plays Nessarose, told People in a new interview that “one of the first conversations” she had with director Jon M. Chu concerned the scene. Chu later told her that the script had been changed from the original Broadway version, “so that it felt less like a fixing moment.”

Instead of Nessarose “pleading for a disability to be fixed,” she explained, the new scene will be “focusing on the magic in general” of the story. (Winnie Holzman, who penned the original book for Wicked on Broadway, co-wrote the film’s script with Dana Fox.)

A Historic Casting

Bode is the first actor to play Nessarose who also uses a wheelchair in real life, and she’s used her platform to call out ableist comments about the character. “When non-disabled strangers are making these jokes with a punchline of not being able to walk, it very much feels like laughing at instead of laughing with,” she said in a Nov. 29 TikTok.

“Aggressive comments of wanting to cause harm and ‘push Nessa out of her wheelchair’ or that she deserves her disability are two very gross and harmful comments that real disabled people, including myself, have heard before,” she continued.

Fortunately, Bode has been able to share her perspective behind the scenes of Wicked, from bigger changes, like Nessarose’s Part 2 storyline, to subtler ones. “I suggested hanging the backpack on the back of her chair rather than carrying it like they initially handed it to me, because that’s just what a lot of wheelchair users do,” Bode told USA Today. “[Chu] was always so great about checking in with me and making sure I was comfortable.”