Chapter 1: What is the significance of Paul Tazewell winning an Oscar for costume design?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. In Wicked for Good, when Glinda descends from her bubble in iridescent blue and lavender, or when Elphaba sweeps through the sky for the first time in a weathered trench coat and trousers, their looks aren't just dazzling us. They're an integral part of the story, telling us who these women have become and the choices they've made.
My guest today, costume designer Paul Taswell, is one of the visual architects of that world. For more than 30 years, his designs across Broadway, television, and film have shaped how we see stories, from the worn revolutionary textures of Hamilton to the saturated palette of West Side Story.
Taswell won the Academy Award last year for his work on Wicked, and during his acceptance speech, he paused to acknowledge the significance of that moment.
I'm the first black man to receive a costume design award for my work on Wicked. I'm so proud of this. Thank you, Mom and Emma, so much.
Chapter 2: How do costumes contribute to storytelling in Wicked?
Thank you, everyone in the UK, for all of your beautiful work. I could not have done this without you. My Aussie and Muses, Cynthia and Ariana, I love you so much. All the other cast, thank you, thank you, thank you for trusting me with bringing your characters to life. This is everything.
Tazewell's work now continues in the next chapter of the Wicked universe with Wicked for Good, which picks up where the first film left off. Elphaba, played by Cynthia Erivo, is now on the run, branded as the Wicked Witch, while Glinda, played by Ariana Grande, rises as the face of a new Oz.
The film also stars Jonathan Bailey, Bowen Yang, Michelle Yeoh, and Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard of Oz, and Coleman Domingo joins the cast as the voice of the Cowardly Lion. Paul Taswell grew up in Ohio, a kid who loved to perform and gradually found his way into costume design. Since then, he's won two Tony Awards for Hamilton and Death Becomes Her.
And in addition to his Oscar win for Wicked, he's also earned an Emmy in 2016 for The Wiz Live. And Paul Taswell, welcome to Fresh Air.
Thank you. It's so good to be here, Tanya. Thank you.
We're going to get into Wicked for Good, but I could hear you sort of chuckling when you were listening to your acceptance speech. It's still like a surprise for you when you listen to it.
Oh, my God, completely. It's just so out of body. And that whole experience was so out of body. I mean, although I, you know, I trained to be a performer, that's not what I do. So... It's not what I, you know, kind of carry forward. You know, so it's always a surprise when I have to get up in front of millions of people and say something that's coherent.
And because I was so moved, I mean, that's one of the things that I was chuckling about.
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Chapter 3: What inspired Paul Tazewell to become a costume designer?
I was like, oh, I forgot to say thank you to all the other cast. I mean, it wasn't that I forgot. I just, you know, just like listing all of them off. And, you know, it minimizes the impact that it's had on me creatively. just to say that it was life-changing. I think that it really has affected my life in great ways.
Well, one of the ways that it's affected your life is that you're now a name. It's very few times, I mean, where we've been able to name people who set the worlds behind the movies. We're often talking to the performers or we're talking to the directors or the producers. But as a costume designer, especially for Wicked, I mean, it's such an integral part of the storyline.
And right from the start of this second film, we're watching your work. We're watching you. These two women step into their new personas, Glinda as the good witch, Elphaba as the wicked witch, and the costumes are really working to tell that story.
Elphaba's elaborate dress from the first film at the end, it's now shredded into a tunic, and Glinda is wearing this blue and lavender instead of that signature pink. Walk me through what you were trying to communicate with those opening looks.
Mm-hmm.
I see my work as a costume designer to be one of a storyteller. And I'm telling a silent story that reveals itself adjacent to the performances of the characters. Throughout these two beautiful films, I was giving context to what their backstory was for each of our principal characters, Elphaba and Glinda, where they came from.
With Elphaba, we have been left at the very end of the first film, Wicked Part One, with Defying Gravity. And she's in her very best dress, dressed to meet the wizard for the first time. And she's also paired that with her pointed hat. And when she jumps out of the window with the velvet cape that she's added on and her broom, we realize that she's completely self-empowered.
I mean, she has arrived and has taken hold of her own power. So to enter into the beginning of Wicked for Good, we get this sense that she has never really gone back to society. She's stayed in exile.
And a way of expressing that was to keep her in the same dress, but because she has been out there, you know, she's advocating for animals, saving animals, really, and taking down lines of guards that, you know, we see at the very beginning where they're all laying the yellow brick road. She has become a huge force and, you know, kind of a superhero. So I wanted to relay that with her silhouette.
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Chapter 4: How does Tazewell's background influence his design choices?
How does it potentially align or become nostalgic of the 1939 film and that Wicked Witch of the West? So that we're always threading, you know, all of these ideas of the Wizard of Oz and Oz, you know, just the Ozian sensibility all together. and wrapping it up in a way that makes sense and says something more, as I was saying, says something more about the characters as well.
You know, one of the things I'm so interested to know is, I mean, both of these films, one and two, were shot simultaneously. And Cynthia Erivo was on the show a few weeks ago, and she told us that she created scents. So she created perfume, smells that she could help differentiate scents the days that she was shooting for each of the films since it was happening.
For your role, you had to know Elphaba's entire journey before you started shooting. When you're designing across two films like that, knowing where a character ends up, how does that change the way you approach, I mean, really, the very first costume?
Well, it's the way that I approach any production. You know, if I was doing a musical, I would be figuring out my characters from the beginning to the end. Because that's how the audience is going to experience them. And then I need to make choices that are consistent as I'm telling that story. The same for Wicked. It was about clothing and style and how the different characters
like the Munchkinlanders versus the Uplanders, which is where Glinda's family is from, versus the Winkies or Kiamako, which is where Fiyero is from. Each of those very specific sensibilities, but together, they help to define each other. I mean, they're consistent by, you know, silhouette. It's by, you know, the shapes of sleeves and the shapes of skirts and the kinds of textures that I use.
I needed to make a world that would be plausible within itself So that you believe in it as an audience member. You're able to, you know, it doesn't, you know, I'm not going to throw a bunch of scenes with sneakers in it unless it's a very specific Ozian sneaker. You know, because that's why, you know, everything in this world needed to be bespoke.
I mean, it was all created specifically for this world.
How did you come to the decision to have Elphaba wear trousers?
Something happened just to my design brain when John M. Chu said that he was casting Cynthia Erivo. And this is after looking at a number of different alphabets, and I was actually privy to some of those audition tapes just to see where his mind was. but to then see that he was thinking of putting Cynthia in that role. One, I had already worked with Cynthia in Harriet, and I knew her range.
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Chapter 5: What are the costume design choices for the characters in Wicked for Good?
And that holding on to that armoring that's created by wearing black, it felt real in a way because, you know, you think about high school students or young students who dress in black or in a very goth way to make themselves feel special or to, you know, create a separation from the rest of, you know, those bullies that might be hurting them.
You know, just to create some significance in their personality.
This is so fascinating what you're saying because in that way, the black stands out because I would guess that black is one of the hardest colors to make visually interesting. But up against this colorful world, I mean, it feels like that texture and that detail in her costumes also show up in the black.
Thank you for mentioning that. I mean, that was, again, another element is that she's side by side with Glinda, Glinda. who is always dressed in pink or in light tones, and they are often very feminine in feminine fabrics, light, airy, elegant, beautiful, those things that are desirable, I made the decision that there had to be balance. And then it just continues to expand.
You know, I was talking about how Cynthia was cast. You know, it was the first time that a Black woman had ever been cast in that role. which is surprising because the whole point of the story is that she is, you know, being ostracized or vilified or, you know, that she's othered because of the color of her skin.
Now, it's a direct connection to, you know, the racial structure of, you know, even our country. There are so many similarities in the emotional story for a person of color and how that relates to Elphaba.
I want to ask you about something that fans have also noted, that there is one steamy, very intimate scene in the film between Elphaba, you know where I'm going, and Fiyero, played by Jonathan Bailey. And Elphaba is wearing this long, gray, chunky wool sweater. It is such a specific choice. Why? Yeah.
Just lately, people have talked about it. They call it the sex cardigan. It came out of, very literally, an organic decision of what does Elphaba have access to? And living alone, what choice would she make when she's, you know, looking for a robe, some way to be protective and warm? And the sweater is one of comfort.
When you put someone in a cardigan or in a sweater, what you're doing is you're creating, you know, there are many different ways you know, connections that we have. Sometimes it's a hand-knit sweater, so it means, you know, you're connecting it to the person who actually made it, you know, which might be a mother or a grandmother or an aunt. So that gives you comfort.
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Chapter 6: How does Tazewell communicate character backstories through costumes?
And that, again, is there's the idea of an oversized, comfortable, something that you could wrap in, how it makes you feel. I get that.
But intimate time with the man that you've been secretly loving forever to put on a sweater, what does it signify?
It's operating as her robe for that moment and for her in exile, and she is making a softer choice alone in her surroundings of roots and vines and all the elements that are around her. And you can imagine that, you know, because she's crafting all of that. You know, she's got a loom in her live space, in her treehouse, where she's weaving her own clothing.
She's manifesting all these things from the elements that are around her. And the sweater is just in keeping with that. Now, indeed, you could say, well, you know, why wasn't it a black sweater? slinky, peignoir, but where would she get, like, why would she have that?
Where would she get that?
Well, why would she even have it? Because it's not like she's, at that moment, she's not thinking about Fiyero. She's thinking about saving, I mean, she angsts some about the love that she has, but she's not expecting that he's going to arrive and therefore she's got her special sexy peignoir that she'll pull out. I mean, that's very much in line with Glinda, but why would she have that?
I think that it just follows through with reasonable choices that define who a character is and what is important for them, where their priorities are. And I felt like the underwear that we have her in, which is very sexy underwear, it's all knitted as well. And it's revealing of her skin. You know, it's... Short, you see her legs and her arms, her stomach even, to use both.
And then they're together and they're actually using the robe as a blanket. So again, it's a much more organic connection to clothing and how the characters relate to it.
It wouldn't be realistic that she'd have a little black lingerie in this forest.
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Chapter 7: What challenges did Tazewell face in designing for two simultaneous films?
My dad, you know, also, he loved model trains. So I remember for a period of time, he had this huge model train table that, you know, where you would have little, you know, model houses. You'd create a little town and the train would ride around it. And then, you know, there was the element of live production.
I mean, they would take us to productions of musicals, you know, that were in the Akron and Cleveland area. They encouraged us to join the drama club, and my brothers and myself, we were all Suzuki violin or cello students. So culture was really big. My grandmother had studied at Oberlin Music, and she was a piano teacher and piano player.
And so it was just a part of our family culture that we were expressive in that way. Your great aunt was also the president of Bennett College, which is an HBCU in Greensboro. Because Bennett is a girls' school, and A&T was a boys' school at that time, or largely male, so they would work together.
But at that time, there was just a lot of navigating what was going on in the city and how to be an activist at that time. It was a serious time.
I'm thinking about the aesthetics for the time because, okay, when you were a very young boy, the civil rights movement was so defined by that visual language of respectability. So the suits and the press dresses and the carefully composed presentation. But by the time you were a teenager, I mean, there was a whole different aesthetic that was emerging. Mm-hmm.
And where did you fall for yourself? Where did you see that? Where did you sit with your aesthetics and also the way that maybe you were thinking about it?
I think that I was engaging with both, really. You know, I remember when my mother cut her hair to become an Afro. So making the decision that she was no longer going to press her hair and grow it long, but she was going to cut it and have it curl up into an afro and go with a natural style. And my grandmother was, you know, completely against it. I was against it even.
It was like because of that change. But then, you know, that was a... I think that it was just a romantic alignment with that long, straight hair and just how much white culture had infused itself into how black people were making choices about how they were going to show up. But wearing jeans to school, I was in grade school at a time where you weren't allowed to wear jeans to school.
And girls weren't allowed to wear slacks unless it was snowing outside and they just needed to walk to school and then they would change out of them. So I experienced all of that and then that shift into a much more casual style. But I was still brought up by... grandparents and parents who, you know, my dad was a research chemist at Firestone, and he dressed in a suit every day and tie.
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Chapter 8: How does Tazewell's personal style resonate with his character designs?
I don't like that. This is my style. This isn't my style. But you're also making choices about how you or what that is, is making choices about how you want to show up for a specific moment.
You know, as a black man, I mean, you're hyper visible. And I mean that literally because when you're a black man in predominantly white spaces, you stand out. You're seen. It's just what happens, you know. So that has to factor into how you understand the way people interpret what you wear and how you present yourself and what you say. Do you remember when you became conscious of that?
Early, early on. Maybe junior high. You know, I wasn't aware of, you know, growing up in Akron. And, you know, Akron, it has its racist moments, areas, you know, just how that dynamic there, especially when I was coming up. I mean, there are certain areas that you didn't go into there.
And it was also the time that, you know, the original Roots, the novel was created and then, you know, the television series happened. So that was in our home. Oh, for the Roots. Yeah, for Roots. And, you know, all this is folding in and I'm trying to figure out who am I and how can I... be true to myself, and embrace all that I am drawn to. Because I was operating with two different things.
One, that it tended to be more feminine than masculine. It tended, you know, because I was drawing and painting and making puppets and creating clothing. So all those were seen as more feminine. And then, you know, I couldn't get around being a black man or a black woman boy, you know, that was how I was seen as well.
So, you know, navigating that, you know, when you think about it, when I think about it, you know, just sitting here with you, it's like, well, that informs why I'm doing what I'm doing because I'm actually trying to control how people see other people before they've said anything.
Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, I'm talking to Oscar, Tony, and Emmy-winning costume designer Paul Taswell. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air. Okay, you have been living in the world of Oz for a really long time in various different ways. We talked about The Wizard of Oz as a child.
And in high school, you designed costumes for your school's production of The Wiz. That's right. What do you remember about that experience and what drew you to design rather than to perform?
At that time, I had not let go of performance. But, you know, in 1978, The Wiz came out as a film. Yep, that's right. The one with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell was in it, and Richard Pryor and Lena Horne. And that was hugely formative for me visually, you know, to see, again, to see black faces in this epic film rendered in great style visually.
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