Jeff Goldblum had reason to sing “What Is This Feeling?” while filming “Wicked,” given the emotional moment he had on set.
The actor, who confirmed he’s playing the role of the Wizard in the upcoming two-part movie musical, got teary as he recalled a childhood fear of witches.
“I shouldn’t talk about it, but I was shooting one day, and I found myself tearing up in fear. You know, a childhood fear came back to me,” Goldblum, 70, said on Thursday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
“I told [costar] Cynthia Erivo, I said, ‘You know, I’m remembering my first dream that I ever had.’ And my first dream was that I was tied to a tree stump, and a witch — because I’d seen ‘Snow White,’ I think, also with a very scary queen witch — had tied me to a tree stump, and I thought [she] was going to chop off my head.”
The witch in the young Goldblum’s dream also repeated the word “peaches,” and Goldblum told host Jimmy Kimmel that his older brothers taunted him with the word “peaches” for weeks afterward.
“Witches scare me,” he concluded.
Goldblum also revealed in Thursday’s interview that he tried watching “The Wizard of Oz” with his two young sons recently, but they couldn’t get through the 1939 film. “It was too scary for them,” he said. “That witch is terrifying. Margaret Hamilton. Terrifying. You should see our witches. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, very good.”
In the “Wicked” films — a two-part adaptation of the Broadway hit of the same name — Erivo plays Elphaba, future Wicked Witch of the West, while Grande portrays Glinda, future Good Witch.
The cast of the film also includes Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Bowen Yang and new Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh. The first “Wicked” movie is due for release on Nov. 27, 2024, with the second scheduled for Dec. 25, 2025, Deadline reports.