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“[Kim] was the mysterious woman in the basement of HHM. But when we saw how Rhea played her and saw that Rhea was not just a magnetic actress, not just a beautiful actress, but someone who’s intensely playful. Once we saw how playful she could be and how she worked with Bob, we realized she wasn’t just a friend or an Ex. She was—and is—the love of Jimmy’s life.” -Peter Gould, Forbes

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Farewell, lords and masters of the board. Time for the real meeting.

SUCCESSION (2018–2023) S02E04: Safe Room

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I'm entering my doctor who era hehe just finished season 1 and I'm broken

PRINTS on my fixed post 🫶

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DIEGO LUNA as CASSIAN ANDOR Andor | 1.02 That Would Be Me

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Jason Mendoza & Eleanor Shellstrop The Good Place 3x07 The Worst Possible Use of Free Will

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SCHITT’S CREEK | 2.12 Lawn Signs

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Charlie Day as Charlie Kelly in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005—)

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🥰🥰

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Doctor Who ○ The Long Game

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COMMUNITY (2009-2015) 2.23 - "A Fistful of Paintballs"

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Schitt’s Creek | S01 E03

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Elementary | 1x11 Dirty Laundry

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It’ll get better. How? I don’t know, but it will.

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I would pick one person in the audience, and I would do the show just for them.

HACKS 4.04 "I Love L.A."

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Did you ever get stage fright?

HACKS 4.04 – I Love LA

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Any thoughts on the evolution of Fiyero over the years? I saw Norbert a million years ago and remember leaving the theater completely in love with him and convinced of Fiyerba. Maybe it was sex appeal, maybe it was that he kept Elphaba from getting lost in her head. But when I saw the tour years later and Fiyero was just kind of there. I'd chalk it up to bad casting but the boots I've seen definitely tend toward "affable and generic popular guy love interest" with a few exceptions like Ryan McCartan and that clip of Michael Campayo you posted.

okay so like

i am going to try and answer this question in a way that doesn't make it sound like i ONLY responded to this ask in order to bitch about jordan litz, because i promise that is not my goal here... but also there is an inevitable venn diagram overlap between giving my opinions on this and uh The Jordan Litz Experience

also oops i accidentally wrote 1500 words on this so let's spare the dash

but yeah like the very short version is that it's not just you -- truly superlative Fiyeros are hard to come by. and like most things with Wicked, whereas it would be convenient and tempting to say things linearly progressed from one norm to another, in the grand scheme of things it's really more that there are a) a few buckets Fiyeros tend to fall into, and those have gone in and out of vogue, whereas b) there are also certain things Fiyero as a narrative entity needs to (or ideally should) accomplish, and regardless of what kind of Fiyero any actor is trying to be some of those things are inherently at odds with each other, making the role an honestly quite difficult job. especially when it seems like The Brass wants a very particular flavor.

because like. given what the character is tasked with, the thing about Fiyero is that he is too good to be true. and i mean this in all ways -- the straightfoward textual way Elphaba calls him out on, where if he WERE genuinely self-absorbed and deeply shallow he wouldn't be so unhappy, but also like... in the way that all glamorous people don't quite feel real, not because they're pretending but because the wonder of them is they aren't pretending, they really are just like that. given what happens in this script, given how Dancing Through Life goes as a scene and how it is the singlehanded catalyst to gelphie's bond and growth, given how the catfight goes and how the show kind of breaks if you cannot truly believe that being with this guy is a big enough carrot to motivate *handwave* all of that -- Fiyero just. he has to Have It. he has to be mind-bendingly, reality-alteringly special. it has to make you feel good just to look at him. you have to know in your heart he smells amazing. he has to generate AWE from the moment he steps on stage, because his charisma and presence are undeniable. it can't just be the ensemble telling you. as an audience you have to feel it, that sort of slack-jawed disbelief: someone like that goes to this school? is this a prank? how lucky are we, just to be able to bask in his presence!!

fiyero is supposed to be The Sun. that's what I'm Not That Girl is ALL ABOUT -- some people are sun people, and some people are moon people and get to reflect that light, and Elphaba thinks so little of herself she can't bring herself to believe she's either.

Norbert Leo Butz had that. Xavier McKinnon has it on the tour now, and Jonathan Bailey (THANK GOD, I AM SO GRATEFUL) has it in the movie. David Burnham had it. Ryan McCartan had it. Justin Guarini (to my infinite shock and delight!!) had it. i don't think you can quite see it on the material that's available of them now, but I'm very certain Derek Klena and Aaron Tveit had it.

that is not a long list, for over twenty years' worth of fiyeros. and admittedly, it doesn't even include some of my FAVORITE fiyeros. because there's a lot more that fiyero has to do and be than that. and i think to do those things well, some guys sacrifice a little bit of the sparkle in order to deliver on the other fronts. (or, well. that's the generous way of saying it. some of them never had the sparkle to begin with but make up for it with hard work and gumption. it's a mix of both, really.)

it might be easiest to explain this part chronologically. in the post-Norbie world, we get three sort of titans of Fiyerohood who stuck around a really long time and left, I think, a lasting impression on the role: Derrick Williams, Kristoffer Cusick, and Sebastian Arcelus. all of them are obviously very charismatic gentlemen, but none of them burn as bright as the dudes I mentioned above. (notably: the bright-burning Fiyeros never seem to last as long. maybe because guys like that are always going to have other, glitzier job offers coming down the pike, maybe because it's more demanding to Do All That eight shows a week, maybe because of plain old rotten luck and timing). but instead they brought a real stability to the part that helped ballast and balance the show, acting as a grounding force for gelphie's antics. Derrick brought a deep empathy that I think modern Fiyeros strive for, and Kris refused to dumb himself down for the role and proved over and over again that Fiyero can work even if absolutely nothing about him is stupid, and Seb provided this loose goofiness and joie de vivre that showed not all of the best parts of Fiyero were an act he put on for other people. these guys couldn't pull off Fiyero being Unreal, but instead they made him real in a way that was lovable and appealing and bolstered the show. Kyle Dean Massey is the all time hits leader when it comes to this genre of Fiyero; Sam Gravitte is probably the most recent example. I'd probably also put Richard Blake (the Simple Child inverse of Kris's Wise Child) and Michael Campayno (BABY!) in this category. Cliffton Hall YEARNED to be this kind of Fiyero but did not have the chops to pull it off, bless his heart.

and then you've got the other bucket of guys -- guys who THINK they're doing what those guys are doing, or guys who were hired by Wicked Inc to bring that kind of balance, only over time "providing balance" has been completely usurped by "not rocking the boat." it's how we get Fiyeros who are Just Happy To Be Here. it's how we get Fiyeros who aren't BAD, they just aren't. y'know. GOOD. it's how we get the endless parade of random nobodies who all blur together so much that, even looking through my list of dozens of tour and sit-down Fiyeros i've seen, I can barely remember anything about them. (sometimes I remember them if they were not very good at playing straight, which... some of them really struggle with.) it seems like at some point, the powers that be got SCARED of Fiyero having a personality. and you can tell it was an edict from on high, because they stopped letting him do "toss toss" (reprise).

which brings us to Jordan Litz. because when you prioritize a Fiyero who doesn't rock the boat, you mostly get a Fiyero who is boring. and Jordan Litz has been the world's most boring Fiyero for *five years.*

Jordan is still at this job because he is unobjectionable. and "unobjectionable" is certainly a path to longevity, but it doesn't do a thing to justify why these two amazing, dynamic, complex leading women would blow up their relationship and their lives to keep him. I have Fiyeros that I Really Do Not Like, but in honesty it is probably worse for a Fiyero to blend into the furniture than to be the wrong kind of bitchy. I may not appreciate Matt Shingledecker's take, but at least he HAD one. Nicholas Dromard had the UNSPEAKABLE PRIVILEGE of closing out the San Francisco run with Eden Fucking Espinosa and Kendra Fucking Kassebaum and he was literally just. sleepwalking through it. I had to look up the boot's metadata to remember his name.

and i do have some empathy, because like. the things Jordan Litz is lacking cannot necessarily be taught. he cannot Work On "having a certain je ne sais quois" the same way he can work on his biceps or his dancing or being present as a scene partner (all of which improved greatly over the course of his run.) and like. yeah, I wouldn't know what to do either if the note i got from the Joe Mantello lackey quality control coordinator was "embrace your It Factor" or "sparkle more."

but also -- just sayin -- you could just hire guys who sparkle in the first place, and then you don't have this issue!!!

because listen. there are a lot of other things we could talk about when it comes to Fiyero. like how obviously the show starts to sag in a tangible way if he can't dance well. or how some actors go way harder on his pathetic loser sadboy meow meow energy and are like "no what makes him awesome is that he sucks." or how most of them try really hard to at least have decent chemistry with both girls, but few of them pull that adoration off enough that they actually Give Thropple. if you're Ryan McCartan, you do all of those things, which is why you're my wife's favorite.

but like. really, the secret's in the toss toss. and the show will never be its best self when Fiyero's not allowed to do it, because it highkey encompasses ALL of that.