Ariana Grande explains Wicked’s ‘No One Mourns the Wicked’
Ariana Grande has explained the “No One Mourns the Wicked” scene. (Universal Pictures)
Ariana Grande has spoken out about her character Glinda’s true feelings during the “No One Mourns the Wicked” scene in Wicked.
Warning: Wicked: Part One spoilers ahead.
The musical is about the unlikely friendship between two witches, Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba the Wicked Witch of the West, and Grande’s Glinda the Good Witch.
If you’ve already seen the record-breaking film or are familiar with the Broadway or West End musical, you’ll know that it starts at the end of the story with the larger-than-life ensemble track “No One Mourns the Wicked”.
This moment sees Glinda arriving down to Munchkinland to confirm Elphaba’s death, which is a conflicting moment for the Good Witch, given her history with the Wicked Witch.
“Her best and only friend has just died,” Grande offered in an interview about the scene with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation. “She has to celebrate this with the Ozians, and she’s walking this tightrope because – if you listen to the lyrics – she’s also spoon-feeding them this opportunity to see the humanness in the situation.”
During the scene, as heard in the soundtrack, a child asks Glinda: “Miss Glinda, why does wickedness happen?” Grande said of this moment: “She gets so excited when this little girl asks the most profound question she’s ever heard.
“She’s like, ‘Thank you for asking! Holy s***! Yes! No! It does happen,’ you know?
“‘Think of what happened to [Elphaba]. If only you knew what happened to her…that I’m complicit in…I contributed to this.’”
Grande explained that her character is grieving, and is also grappling with the decisions that they both made in their final moments together. “There’s guilt, there’s grief, and within grief, there are so many different stages of it. There’s anger, there’s disappointment. Like, ‘you could have not flown away’.
“When Elphaba says in ‘Defying Gravity’, ‘Think of what we could do together,’ there’s a reverse of that. Glinda could have said, ‘Think of what we could do together. We could turn this s*** around from the inside out.’
“But she knows that Elphaba would never work with these people, [she] would never reason with the bad guys, and would never be a part of this system that has never taken care of her and that Glinda only has benefited from.”
The star also offered that her character also needs to fulfil the promise that she made in her new role as The Land of Oz’s beacon of hope, regardless of whether or not Glinda made the right choice.
“She has this newfound opportunity of being this famous person, this figure, this princess that they all look to for hope and for goodness and she’s like ‘Where’s mine, though? I need some hope, and I need that validation from you guys that you’re getting from me.
“‘But It’s so empty without her, and was it worth it? And how can I now make it worth it as Glinda the Good? How can I actually become good? Because maybe I haven’t fully been as good as I’d like to be, because no one is as brave as Elphaba.’”
Wicked: Part One is out now in cinemas. Wicked: For Good is out in cinemas on 21 November 2025.
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