Wicked star Bowen Yang thinks Jonathan Bailey’s Fiyero is ‘canonically bisexual’

Saturday Night Live regular Bowen Yang has shared his suspicion that Wicked heartthrob Fiyero, played by Jonathan Bailey, is “canonically bisexual”.

Speaking exclusively to PinkNews, Yang, who stars in Jon M. Chu’s musical epic as Glinda The Good Witch’s (Ariana Grande) mean girl bestie Pfannee, suggested that Fiyero has always been a little fruity.

“I think Fiyero is canonically bisexual but I feel like this is something that just like went over my head growing up watching Wicked, being like: ‘Well Fiyero just is so dashing and everybody loves him,’ but it’s because he kind of leans into these narcissistic qualities, or these seemingly narcissistic qualities about him,” Bowen explained.

“But no, something about Jonny in this is so… enthralling. It’s nice,” he added coquettishly ahead of Wicked‘s release this Friday (22 November).

Bowen’s co-star Bronwyn James, who plays Glinda’s other right-hand woman, jokingly agreed: “It’s nice. Lovely.”

Last month, Bowen teased that Jonathan Bailey’s Fiyero radiates “bisexual energy” in Wicked. That said, Fiyero’s role in the The Wizard of Oz prequel is as the love interest of both Glinda and Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo).

Pfannee, on the other hand, is explicitly queer, becoming overwhelmingly flustered at the arrival of Fiyero at Shiz University. Honestly, we can see why.

Yang and James went on to explain why they think the story of Wicked has resonated with queer people for nearly three decades. And no, it’s not just because of the undeniable sapphic chemistry between Elphaba and Glinda (though that’s surely part of the appeal).

“It’s one of these stories that has such a throughline moral of like, a person being othered and a person being ostracised for something that they were born with,” James shared.

“I think especially with queer people as an umbrella term, a lot of us can relate to that, and that’s why Wicked stood the test of time for so long, because we can all look at Elphaba and see her struggle and see how she is sticking to her guns and, come what may, people be damned, she’s going to stay by her integrity.”

In real life, both Bowen Yang and Bronwyn James fall under the LGBTQ+ umbrella.

“It’s also a story about reconciling what the world tells you you are, and who you know yourself to be and that’s part of being queer too,” Yang agreed.

“It’s just rejecting certain things that people are projecting on to you and you’re like, ‘I’m me. I’m part of this community of other people but also I’m individual in a lot ways and that’s Elphaba and that’s Glinda.”

During their interview with PinkNews, Glinda’s on-screen disciples recounted the experience of learning the soon-to-be iconic bookography from the “What Is This Feeling?” performance.

“The way that it’s burned into my memory, I will be 90-years-old on my deathbed being like…” Brown laughed, humming the song. “I’m going to be doing that in bed tonight now.”

“I mean, we learned that way in advance,” Yang revealed. We were given a crash course on all the choreography by the most incredible team of dancers, choreographers, who had literally hordes of people to take care of and communicate with.

“We learned all of it and then they just refreshed us over the course of filming and tweaked things, adapted things. I mean adapt is the big word there, they were so patient with us and made sure that we could execute it.”

“I think we did quite well, actually,” Brown added.

Wicked is released in cinemas on Friday, 22 November.

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