Ethan Slater debuts his 'Wicked' Lego figure, teases 'epic' sequel at Comic-Con
SAN DIEGO – "Wicked" star Ethan Slater didn't need Lego sets filled with witches, princes, woodsmen and yellow brick roads. When he was a kid, it was all about the unmarked trunk overflowing with bricks of all colors.
But as an adult getting to play with his own Lego minifigure, the 33-year-old Tony-nominated actor is pretty wowed. Slater, who played Boq Woodsman in the Oscar-nominated first "Wicked," was on hand at the pop-culture festival Comic-Con at the San Diego Convention Center to unveil a bunch of new Lego sets inspired by the upcoming movie sequel "Wicked: For Good" (in theaters Nov. 21).
Taking a peek at all the sets for the first time, Slater unsurprisingly spends the most time with the set featuring Boq and his Munchkinland home alongside toy versions of Elphaba (played in the movie by Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande).
He notes that Boq's gray wardrobe is new for fans in the next movie, and points out the "Beware of the Wicked Witch" sign, part of the Wizard of Oz's propaganda against Elphaba on the side of the Lego building. "Elphaba's one of Boq's only friends, and on the side of his house is the smear campaign against her. Terrible," Slater says.
As for the new movie coming soon, Slater teases an "epic conclusion" where "it's everything coming to a head."
All the characters, from Elphaba and Glinda to Boq and Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), "have made these huge decisions at the very end of the first movie. How do they live with or transcend the consequences of those decisions?" Slater says. "So what we're going to see is all of these characters a little bit older. We already know them so well that to see how they grow in the second movie (creates) an even deeper connection to them."
He gets a kick out of the "Wicked" wall art set, which features figures of Dorothy and her crew from "The Wizard of Oz," including Toto. "The first role ever was when I was 4 years old, I played Toto to my sister's Dorothy," Slater says. "I'm going to pretend that Toto is also a mini fig of me. It's the cutest I've ever looked."
He also has fun playing with a set including Glinda using a magnifying glass. "What is she looking for with this? What is she looking for here? Does it really work? This is so Detective Glinda. That's actually a spinoff coming soon," Slater quips.
Back in the day, Slater avoided big themed Lego sets in favor of diving into his "huge bucket" of Legos and "taking the world that was in my head and trying to build a version of it," he says. Yet these new "Wicked" Legos do justice to the work of him and his co-stars.
"The special thing about making 'Wicked' was being in this world and it was so intricately designed," Slater says. "The work in all of these Lego sets that make it just as intricate and lets you experience it and be creative with it, it's just a really beautiful thing. It feels really true to what we did."