Cynthia Erivo stopped by The Tonight Show to discuss the pressures and pleasures of taking on the role of Elphaba in the forthcoming film adaptation of Wicked. At the end of her chat with host Jimmy Fallon, Erivo shared a never-before-seen clip from the movie teasing her performance of beloved music number “The Wizard and I.”

Fallon also convinced Erivo to offer a preview of her rendition of “Defying Gravity,” the Broadway musical’s most memorable song. The actress admitted that she ended up doing the song “slightly different” than how the number was written. “I did study it,” she admitted. “When I first auditioned that’s what I did. I did it as was written.”

She added that the audition was “crazy” and lasted for three hours. “I was very ill by the end of it,” she told Fallon. “I was in bed for the next week, for like four days with a 104 fever. It was the craziest weekend because I had sung at Disney Hall the night before.”

Erivo said that she didn’t audition with co-star Ariana Grande and didn’t know the singer was up for the role of Galinda until the casting was confirmed. “We’d never met,” Erivo said, adding that it felt like “instant chemistry.” “It was really easy,” she said of their relationship. “She was lovely.”

Elsewhere on the late-night show, Fallon enlisted Erivo to play his “Musical Genre Challenge,” which involved her transforming “The Sound of Music” into R&B pop and Dream Girls’ “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” into opera.

Part one of Wicked is slated to hit theaters on Nov. 22, with part two arriving on Nov. 21, 2025. The soundtracks for both halves of the film will be released concurrently. The movie was directed by Jon M. Chu and also stars Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum, Bowen Yang, and Peter Dinklage.