Editorial note: Light spoilers ahead for “Wicked: For Good” even though the stage musical has existed for 20 years.
“Because I knew you, I have been changed for good,” Elphaba and Glinda sing in “Wicked,” sharing one final, bittersweet moment together before saying goodbye.
Now, Jewish actor Ethan Slater is sharing who changed his life for good.
“We lost my bubbe recently,” Ethan revealed on the “Wicked: For Good” green carpet last week. “My grandmother, she was an incredibly wonderful woman. And she would have loved this. She was somebody who was very like, as I knew her, was very kind and very sort of like zen in a way that I don’t know how to describe without talking for another hour. And so she’s definitely changed me and our whole family for good.”
Ethan plays the role of Boq in “Wicked” and “Wicked: For Good,” before Elphaba casts a spell to turn him into the tin man in the latter film. But who says this tin man doesn’t have a heart?!
Another way Ethan’s bubbe changed his life for good relates to his run as SpongeBob in “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical” on Broadway. In 2017, Ethan shared with JTA that he first watched the Nickelodeon cartoon at his bubbe’s house because his family didn’t have cable. “Fortunately, thanks to grandma, Slater’s peripheral knowledge of Bikini Bottom and its denizens helped convince [director Tina Landau] that he was her ideal SpongeBob,” writer Curt Schleier explained. Ethan would go on to be Tony-nominated for his performance, book Boq in “Wicked” and, most recently, co-write a play about Marcel Marceau’s worked in the French resistance during the Holocaust.
May Ethan Slater’s bubbe’s memory be for good and for a blessing.
