Producers Zadan, Meron ease on down a familiar road in NBC’s ‘The Wiz Live!’
Long before they became professional partners, veteran producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron were fans of the Broadway musical The Wiz, an adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz featuring African-American characters.
“Neil had seen the show when he was a kid, when we didn’t even know each other,” Zadan says.
“Separately, we had each seen it many times, with Stephanie Mills,” star of the original 1975 Broadway production playing starry-eyed Kansas farm girl Dorothy.
Thus NBC’s The Wiz Live!, which airs Thursday (8 p.m. ET/PT), marks the realization of a long-held dream for the duo, who also served as executive producers for last year’s Peter Pan Live! and 2013’s The Sound of Music Live!
What neither he nor Meron knew when they made the decision, Zadan says, “is the (level of ) impact this show had on the African-American community” — both in its stage incarnation and in a 1978 film adaptation starring Diana Ross as Dorothy, Michael Jackson as Scarecrow, Nipsey Russell as Tin Man and Ted Ross as Cowardly Lion.
In The Wiz Live! — adapted from the stage version, and not the critically panned 1978 movie, Meron stresses — 19-year-old newcomer Shanice Willams plays Dorothy, Elijah Kelley is the Scarecrow, Ne-Yo is the Tin Man and David Alan Grier is the Lion. Mills returns, this time as Auntie Em, with Queen Latifah cast as The Wiz and Mary J. Blige as Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Orange Is the New Black’s Uzo Aduba as Glinda, the Good Witch of the South. Rapper Common appears as the Bouncer, gatekeeper of the Emerald City’s entrance.
“The show was easier to cast this year, because people have such a deep connection to it,” Meron says.
“Stars actually reached out to us, which hadn’t really happened it the past two years. People felt they wanted to do The Wiz again for the next generation, for them to own this iteration.”
Ne-Yo, who originally auditioned for the part of Scarecrow, confirms: “When I heard (The Wiz Live!) was a go, I called my publicist, I called my management, everybody.
“I said, ‘Look, I don’t care if I’m sweeping the floor, or serving drinks. I have to be a part of this.’ ”
When Zadan and Meron reached out to Latifah, with whom they’d worked on screen adaptations of musicals Chicago and Hairspray and a TV movie of Steel Magnolias, she “told us The Wiz was the first show she ever saw. She said that she remembered watching Stephanie Mills sing Home, that it was then she decided she wanted to be a performer.”
Zadan concedes the relative failure, in ratings, of Peter Pan Live!, which had 9.1 million same-day viewers — less than half the audience for The Sound of Music Live! — was instructive. “We discovered two things: First, America has had enough of the Peter Pan story — as evidenced by the fact that a Peter Pan film that just came out (Pan) cost $150 million and did nothing.” Second, Zadan says, “we had gone into The Sound of Music (Live!) with a big title and a big star — Carrie Underwood (as Maria), who brought a massive following.”
“We learned you can’t do these shows without a title and stars.”