Dancing Through Faith and Doubt with 'Wicked' Author Gregory Maguire

In this soulful and thought-provoking episode of Queerly Beloved, Wil Fisher sits down with literary Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Gregory Maguire—author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Gregory also happens to identify as both gay and Catholic, and brings a deep well of wisdom around faith, identity, creativity, and queerness, which he shares so beautifully in this interview.

He’s published dozens of novels, often reimagining classic stories and inventing imaginative, layered worlds. His work is known for its emotional depth and its keen understanding of what it means to be human. He’s also the founder of Children’s Literature New England, a nonprofit celebrating the power of story. Gregory lives with his husband, painter Andy Newman, and together they’ve raised three adopted children.

In the interview Gregory shares about his relationship with Catholicism, the sacred tension between faith and doubt, and the drag of heteronormativity. He shares playful childhood memories of directing Wizard of Oz backyard productions and Wil also shares his Wizard of Oz memories. 

They also discuss:

• Writing as an act of meditation and prayer.
• The idea that faith and doubt are inseparable companions.
• How storytelling helps us reshape identity, reclaim power, and stay spiritually awake.
• The deeper baptismal symbolism in Dorothy’s water-throwing moment.
• Gregory’s decision to avoid previews and fanfare in advance of Wicked for Good so he can see it fresh!
• A story about advice he received guiding him to pursue his creative projects rather than stepping into priesthood. 

Gregory Maguire’s wisdom will inspire you to keep rewriting your own myth.

Learn More about Gregory here - https://gregorymaguire.com/

Learn about Wil Fisher and his work here - https://www.wil-fullyliving.com/

Get info about the Summer Soulful Awakened Hearts retreat happening Labor Day in San Diego here- https://www.wil-fullyliving.com/events

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Transcript

Wil Fisher  0:02  
Hello, Gregory, welcome to queerly Beloved. 

Gregory  0:05  
Hello there. I'm very happy to be here. 

Wil Fisher  0:08  
I'm so happy to have you, and so excited to have this conversation today. So thanks again for making the time for this. So I'd love to start with the first question I begin all my interviews with, and that is to take a breath and get grounded and tell me who you are today in this particular moment, but tell me by describing a drag avatar that embodies that. And it doesn't have to be like a drag queen. It can just be any kind of Avatar that that really embodies who you are in this particular moment.

Gregory  0:45  
Wow, that is an interesting question. And I wonder how many people fumble the way I'm doing.

Wil Fisher  0:52  
Well, I can go first. So no,

Gregory  0:54  
okay, so yeah, go, go first, and then I'll tell you about my history of drag avatars.

Wil Fisher  0:59  
Okay, perfect. Okay, yes, no, no. Fumblings happen. No fumbling at all. Okay, so let me, let me tap in. I often start with what I was already naturally pulling in, in terms of my clothing today, which is green, and I am, I am feeling this moment of growth and feeling this, this kind of green vibe today, and so, huh? So what's coming through is like poison, like poison ivy type character, you know, she's like, she's connected to the earth. She's like, wrapped in vines. She's remembering the nourishment that happens when she is present to her connection to the earth and the energy that that gives her. And so, yeah, as I'm as I'm describing her, I'm also seeing some blonde hair. I'm seeing some maybe some snake energy, even maybe that's that's bringing in the erotic. Maybe I'm I'm desiring some erotic connection today. I mean, I that's just coming through as I speak. So, yeah, I'm feeling this kind of poison ivy avatar today.

Gregory  2:10  
Well, that you know, that is very instructive, and thank you for joining me in my therapy session. And Bill at the truth is that it isn't a an arresting question for me, because for most of my life, I have been peculiarly uninterested in disguises and in transformations. I'm old enough, and I'm older enough than you to have to remember the straight jacket Eisenhower era, which which is when I was born, and how my first years were, before 1960 and to remember the feeling of being incarcerated, even as a child, before the age of seven, in a certain kind of maleness that I knew was not going to be a good fit for me, but rather than disguise myself, which I think a lot of people do, and I have no objection to it, rather than disguise myself at my young age, I felt that my my job, even long before I could articulate It was to strip away the false drag of heteronormativity that I was raised to put on and to take that off. And so for me, I have lots of friends who love Ru Paul and I have a bunch of friends who gather every week that it's on, and I, I call them the RU Paulines. Like there's some sort of, there's some sort of Christian sect following the sacred, the sacred teachings of RuPaul who is very wise and very consoling in many ways. But even though I go because I like the company of these guys, it doesn't connect with me. You know, I think I'm too old, and I think I fought too hard to put disguises down in order to take them up willingly. Now that said, if you to answer your question, because this is a powerless time in which we're living, and I'm speaking ecologically, I'm speaking politically. I'm speaking internationally. I'm speaking in just about every metric you can metric system you can use. I find that sometimes, including about two weeks ago, I am in a position where I need to be a spokesperson. And I'll give you an example. About two weeks ago, I spoke at a county courthouse about half an hour from my home. I was invited by the judge who presides over that courthouse to speak to a number of state officials, a number of police officers, some of whom I was sure were working for ice and. Lawyers, some kids from the local high school. It was a day of law, and I was probably intended to be the cultural division, or maybe the comic relief, I don't know, because people spoke very soberly about the need for a rule of law. When I got to I was the last person on the program. And when I got there, I said, Look, I see I'm the only man in the room who is not wearing a tie and a button down shirt. I'm wearing a wore jacket and I wore a t shirt. And I said, for me, this is a kind of drag, if I had to tie and a button down shirt, that would be a falseness to me. And although I knew to honor the court, I should probably step in line, I couldn't do it. I couldn't, couldn't do that drag and be honest to myself. So I'm, I'm sort of answering your question in the opposite way, is what it's what I used to put on that was me rather than what I identify myself. Because I I spend my whole life identifying myself with characters the way you just did with the wonderful, this wonderful kind of earth, earth goddess, serpent character. So I, that's my answer. I think I, I've tried to embrace the Henry David Thoreau quote that says we were beware of enterprises that require new clothes. I I've tried to strip down in my in my humility and in my honesty, and to the extent that I can to my essence, rather than to rather than to build it up. So it's just a different instinct. Oh,

Wil Fisher  6:50  
it's so it's so beautiful and intriguing. I really appreciate that take on my question and the thoughts that it's percolating for me already, and I do love this idea. You know, one of the quotes I love by Harry hay is to remove the ugly green frog skin of heteronormity and reveal the hidden prints within and so, so I loved you mentioning, you know, stripping yourself of and it's also funny that we're now in the world of greenness, you know. And then there's Elphaba, which I wasn't even being conscious of, but so yeah, there's something really beautiful about that. And I agree that so many queer folks have worn masks in order to survive the world. And so it is a funny thing to then be playfully putting new ones on. And I suppose when I approach it, the idea I try to approach it not from a energy of disguise, but an energy of I am so much more than just this body here, and how can I find those other aspects of myself using this tool or this access point of drag to help create a bigger expression of self That's more comparable to how big this potential light is that that is, you know, my my unique consciousness, makes

Gregory  8:26  
total sense to me. And so I will piggyback upon that and say, in a way, for a creative novelist, anytime you put on another character, that's a drag act. Yes, I mean, Elphaba is my drag act Alpha drag name, so too is, is her son, Lear. He's a he's a drag artist, because he's not me, but he is me, and and, and I've written 44 books, so I basically half of them have women or girls as main characters. And I suppose those are drag figurines of myself, but I do that all the time. I do that for a living. I've done that since I was five, and that's part of what, that's part of what, part of what, directed me toward making things possibly when I was five and thought, Oh, this is a scary world, because my father and the men I see up and down the block going off to work in their SNAP rimmed hats and their gray flannel suits, I knew it. I knew by the time I was five I was not going to be able to do that. I was I did. I did not see myself as gay. Obviously, I thought I would grow up and and get married to a woman and have kids and have a family. I didn't see anything, but I knew I could not be so boring, wear gray and wear a hat and walk downtown every day like all the fathers in the neighborhood around me, sorry, and lift this up and take it off. Oh, can I do you mind if I take this

Wil Fisher  10:03  
no, go for it. Please hit pause. Yeah, no problem. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I would say, Yeah, heteronormativity is kind of boring in some ways, and so it is exciting that queer folks have this opportunity or invitation to think outside of that box. And when you were talking about the grayness of the suits, it kind of brought me into the world of The Wizard of Oz with where we got to start that movie in black and white. And then there's that moment, that Technicolor moment, when, you know, we suddenly get to see all the colors. And I remember as a kid, I would watch that moment. I'd like watch where it goes from black and white into color, and then I'd rewind it and watch it again and oh, wow, it's so magical for me every time it like took my breath away. I'm just curious about your relationship with, with with that movie. And I mean as saying it too, it's like, I wonder if that is something that queer folks are witnessing on some unconscious level. You know, there is this connection that many gay men in particular have with that film, of course, I imagine it in part, has to do with Judy Garland, but maybe there's something else I'm curious about your relationship with that film, and your thoughts on that film and its its connection to queer culture,

Gregory  11:33  
sure, and I will say that because I'm older than you And because we were from a slightly disadvantaged background. We only had a black and white TV, and I didn't know that the film was in color until teens. But that did not erode the possibility of magical transformation when Dorothy opens the door and steps into Munchkin land. Indeed, I've just recently I heard about how that particular scene was filmed, I always had understood, I don't have to always guess, that there was some kind of splicing involved, you know, that that they took Dorothy in the house and shot that, and then they they dropped in, you know, the color sequence with, you know, razor blades and second cameras and stuff. In fact, that was that the house, the room Dorothy's parlor bedroom, wherever she is, was filmed in color, but they painted the walls and they and they locked and they lit it and they and they gave her costume to look like it was black and white, wow. And, and the actress who opens the door to Munchkinland is not Judy Garland. The actress is somebody else. She opens the door the camera goes over her shoulder into Munchkin land and Judy Garland. I think I read this or heard this, yes, actually standing outside next to the house, and she steps into the frame in full color. So it's two different actresses. Now, isn't that

Wil Fisher  13:13  
as a fun fact? That's yeah,

Gregory  13:15  
I don't know I saw this. There's so much about us this year, thanks. Pardon. And so I've never heard that before, but maybe it's not even true, but I like to think about it. I've been recently working on a potential memoir that I've just sent to my publisher, and one of the things that I found myself writing about was about that exact scene and that without the benefit of color, and the transformation from the drab black and white Kansas to the full Technicolor Munchkin, then there still is a sense of magical possibility when Dorothy leaves her home and arrives in Oz, you know, over the threshold. And one of the things I found myself writing, and I had never really thought about this before. Is that for a child watching that movie, when you land in Munchkin land two with Dorothy, you have finally come to a place that is scaled to you, that munchkins are childside and the buildings are child size, and God is there too, but God is small, you know, and you've known this all along as a kid, you walk through into the full color world that is ready to accept you, even down to its scale. And that that never occurred to me before, and I think it's part of why we, all we who saw it as kids, found ourselves so welcomed in that whole story, because from the very beginning, a hand reached out to us and said, you have you know you're you're not too small for here. You don't have to wait. Here is satisfaction. Here is color. Here is all the things like gay boys love, you know, song and dance and and, but I remember watching as almost as an architecture student, how the Munchkins came out from around the houses and through the doors and down the road and just feeling it was a vision of Paradise, and I and I was welcomed there. I had a place there too. And I I love that I and I didn't really know that I thought that until I was writing that paragraph in my journal, in my memoir. Oh, I love that

Wil Fisher  15:31  
so much too. Yeah, it was mysterious how for me connecting it was so immediately, when I my, my story with it is that I, yes, we had a color TV, and we also had just purchased a VCR, so that, that dates me a little bit too. So we had a VCR, and it came on the TV, as it did every year. And so we recorded it, but it was the very first thing that we recorded, and the only thing we had recorded, and then shortly thereafter, I got chicken pox. Do kids still get chicken pox? Maybe that's dating me too. I don't know.

Gregory  16:10  
But no, I don't think ours ever did. They might have had been inoculated or

Wil Fisher  16:14  
something. I feel like every kid got chicken pox. At one point. It was like a rite of passage. So I got chicken

Gregory  16:19  
pox, chicken pox with a calamine lotion. Yeah, yeah. So

Wil Fisher  16:23  
then, so that always meant that you got to stay home from school for a number of days. And so I stayed home from school, and we had this one VHS, and I just put it in and played it, and then again, rewound. I mean, I'd watch that one particular scene, but I'd watch the whole thing again and again and again, and then eventually, later in life, I got to be a munchkin in a in a community theater production of it. It was my very first play. And then I stuck with community theater for many years, and eventually got to play the Scarecrow. So it's been a part of my karmic cycle in a funny way, yeah, yeah, wow. And I feel I read a story about you, like casting it with with your your school friends. Is that correct? Was it?

Gregory  17:10  
Oh, yes, yes. My, I am from a large family, and I was often in charge of babysitting on a Saturday in the backyard with a locked fence and so and also, I was just a kid with big ideas. I sometimes think that in any large family, there's usually one kid who's the manager or the boss kid. You know, when I was I was centrally placed. I had three older three younger siblings, perfect. I was the one who would decide what we would do. And because something was always happening in our yard, because I was in charge, other neighborhood kids would come by to see what's going on in at McGuire's. And I would, I would say, well, we're doing Wizard of Oz today. You want to be in it, you know, come over here and stand there, and I'll give out parts. And we would do this just we did it a couple of times. We did it after it had been on TV, and everybody, all the school kids, had been worked up to a lather of excitement over being able to see it again. So yes, I assigned roles and we would we didn't need to run through the script or the beats of the storytelling, because we'd all seen it the night before, and it was as well known to us as the story of the birth of Jesus. So we got started in the backyard, and I would say my sister Annie is Glenda, and somebody else is Dorothy, and I was usually the Scarecrow, because he was the best and but after we've run through the story, I mean, a bunch of school kids under the age of eight can act out the Wizard of Oz in about 12 minutes, even though it's a 92 minute film, if you leave out all the music. Then we just ran from place. You know, that corner of the yard is Munchkin land. That corner the yard is witch's castle. And you know, so we'd run around and play. But after, after the first run through, I began to lose my my crew, because it was done. And now what? And I'd say, people shape up. Let's not lose focus. We're going to do this again, and we're going to change it up a little bit now, and we're going to switch the cast, and we're going to this time, you be this one, you be that one, and you be Captain Hook, and I would import some other element story, and some of the littler kids would squawk and go on strike and say, Captain Hook is gonna do this. Excuse me, it's my story. I'm the author now, and in my version, Captain Hook arrives about a third of the way through, and he and the witch meet and fall in love, and they have twins. So that is, that is something that kind of inspired me to understand. That all stories are, they're malleable. And when we add some new material to them, they are, they're not. They can't end the same way. They are adjustable, and you begin to own them yourself. I didn't put it into so many words that way, because all kids play, you know, they play house, they play school, they play cops and robbers, or we used to cowboys and Indians. We used to. But once you own it, once it becomes yours, you actually get to dictate how it works. And this is a metaphor among many others, of what it means to go up and to actually own the world, own the skin, own the drag you're going to put on, or the drag you're going to reject, you just own the whole thing. And I think it's, I think it's terribly exciting and it's terribly empowering when kids play, and when they really throw themselves into their work, because play is work for kids.

Wil Fisher  20:59  
Mm, absolutely. And to to receive that lesson, that we are the authors of our own stories, that we are the story makers of our lives, and that we get to playfully create, we get to playfully co create these lives that we're living, and to experience that through, yeah, through, through play in that way. I think that's beautiful. I also think it's just really telling and fun that you were playing in the world of Oz as a kid and then later as an adult, exploring it deeply.

Gregory  21:31  
Yes, well, I must have a lot of these questions. Are questions that I have asked myself because of this nine month Act of, you know, writing a memoir, which sure, at the start I thought, you know, who cares what happened to you? And you know, you didn't, you didn't run an international corporation, and you didn't solve, you know, solve the problem of cancer or anything. So why would you bother? But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, well, you have, you have had your life. And just as you were talking at the beginning, before we started rolling about people either embracing or rejecting the kind of faith traditions in which they grew up. The truth is, I was a faithful kid, a devout kid, and I had to make adjustments between the notion of what does it mean to be pious and to honor the truth of what was taught me, and at the same time to accept the fact that I'd been gifted given like a kind of charism, with an enormous urge and a need to make things and to make stories and to tell things, and to be the boss Kid, you know, I, I had to work with all that stuff, you know, my head at the same time. So I do think that kids learn so much from play, though, because they learn confidence, among other things. They also learn by watching themselves what it is that they want to change in the world. You know, they they learn that by playing

Wil Fisher  23:04  
absolutely and I think adults learn a lot from play as well. I actually am part of a improv troupe, and I have got 10 people who come to my house every Tuesday night and we play for two hours. Wow, yeah. And it really does help with confidence. It helps with just thinking creatively and working together. It's a very diverse group of people that I would never hang out with regularly, but because we have this shared passion for improv and play, we come together and create these wild, weird stories every week. So yeah, I find it a a tool for adults that is underused as well. It's something that I want to bring more into. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. We started, you started talking a little about your Catholicism. I'd love for you to share more about that. What it was like growing up Catholic What? What? What is your relationship with Catholicism? How has that ebbed and flowed? Or, yeah, anything you want to share about that Sure,

Gregory  24:03  
there, just as one can say about people who identify as Jewish, you can identify as Catholic because you were raised Catholic, because you were raised in a Catholic, an environment, a ghetto, if you wil, all those three Words apply to me, and even if you have shut off the strong conviction of of a child that what you were taught was literal biblical truth, and you know as true as the laws of physics or the laws of chronology or time, that you still, you still can you still, Not only can you remain Catholic, I think you can't fail to remain Catholic. If you were raised Catholic in a certain way, you can turn your back on the church. You cannot believe anymore. You can actually be angry at it and try to tear it down. But then it doesn't change your identity. The best you can the best you can claim is as a recovering Catholic. Which is your phrase, but it's it speaks to the point that that your identity is shaped in childhood. Sure. So I am a person to go right out on a limb. I'm a person who was raised Catholic, who considered very, very intently in my late teens and early 20s whether I would go into the church and become a priest. And who has is is, I don't know if a proud or humiliated or what. I don't know how to describe it. I remain Catholic. I identify as Catholic. I call myself a Catholic. I don't go to church very much anymore, but being Catholic is inseparable from me. It's as close to me as being gay. I can't take the gay part out of me. I can't take the Catholic part out of me either. I don't believe dogma the way I believed it when I was seven or when I was 12 or when I was 22 I think of it primarily as metaphoric, but there are times when my confidence about it being a metaphor wobbles, and a few minutes, I have access to an older sense of conviction and hope that was more that was more literal, and then that, then that fades away to the one thing I've learned over many years of thinking about this and arguing about it to people who think you can't be intellectual and Catholic, those are like, it's impossible, you know, so sue me. What can I do this? This is who I am. But I also have realized that I believe that faith and doubt are like two sides of the coin of being alive, and you can't have one without the other. You really can't You can't even have doubt unless you can conceive of the fact of a possible faith on the other side of it, even if you can't name it, even if you can't spend it, even if you can't revolve the coin, to see what's on the other side. Doubt doesn't have any meaning unless it's contradictory to the faith. Faith doesn't have any meaning unless it is argued against by doubt. And I think those artists, William Blake might put it contrary states of the human soul, that's what I

Wil Fisher  27:28  
believe. Oh, that's good. That's juicy. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. It's interesting. There's a sci fi show my boyfriend are watching right now called Foundation, and there's a character called the Empire, and it is a ruling King authority who has found a way to clone themselves. So they just pass themselves along each generation. So they've been ruling for lifetimes and lifetimes and lifetimes, and last night's episode was confronting this ruler with the idea that he has no doubt and has never learned or known doubt. Oh, really. And the confrontation was also around the lack of soul, that this that this ruler has no soul, and that as a result, there's no opportunity for a soul evolution. And so I don't have a question yet, but I just want to share, like, what you're sharing is like, super percolating in me, yeah, so it was bringing through for me last night, this idea of the value of doubt, that, because when they said that to his character, I was thinking, well, lucky guy, like, yeah, he's never experienced doubt. Like, that's great. I wish I never had doubt, because I'm often coming up against doubt and trying to get rid of it, trying to, you know, how can I just have faith that, you know, faith in something and the great mystery, the great spirit, whatever that may be. How can I have faith in myself and get rid of all that doubt? And yet, perhaps, part of our journey and the lessons we're meant to learn is being confronted by it and in relationship with doubt, and that play between faith and doubt, there's value to that. Oh,

Gregory  29:27  
I think, I think there is. And indeed, you might say that the play between faith and doubt is the time stamp on every second of the life that you're given for the life that has come to you, it is actually a proof of of a pulse. You know, faith and doubt is pulse. It's a pulsing experience. It's it's a pulsing action. And I am not frightened of doubt, and I'm not frightened of faith either, and I'm not frightened. Threatened not to be able to answer the question any more deeply than I just have that is, that is who I am, and that's how I prove to myself that I'm alive every day, and even if, when I die, the questions of faith and doubt have only been an intellectual puzzle that dies with me when my body is deemed, you know, dead on arrival, then that's okay, because it has given me the pulse of life during my time. Mm, and that, that I think is a holy, you know, that's a holy thing to me who believes in some kind of holiness. Holiness, to me, one definition of holiness is the paying of attention. Many ways that we pay attention, including by enjoying art, including by loving our lovers, including by respecting and honoring and questioning our past and imagining our futures. It's attention. Anytime we pay attention to that which is significant. I believe we're being we're expressing a kind of holy H, O, L, Y, commitment to existence, to being alive and to the reality of eventually being dead. It's still holy to pay attention to all that. I believe,

Wil Fisher  31:20  
yeah, just receiving that, yeah, it's calling me into a deeper awareness of the the importance and sacredness of presence, of aliveness, of being present and aware of my aliveness and all the beautiful, miraculous blessings in every single moment that we get to experience this aliveness, yeah, that is holy indeed. Now we kind of started talking about soul, and you know, Elphaba famously says, I do not believe in souls, or at least not my own. And I'm curious if you could share a little more about perhaps your thoughts on soul and your thoughts on the questions posed within your writing around souls, or the intended questions.

Gregory  32:18  
Well, one thing that I think writing is for, is to, I mean, I mean creative writing is for, is to raise questions and and refuse to answer them. Yes, that's I think we we throw ourselves into art that qualifies as true art because it demands us to consider its issues, and it will not. It will not draw a black line at the bottom of the column and give us the answer, that's our that's our job as as purveyors of music, as purveyors of literature, art, poetry, dance, whatever it is that that floats our boats, as it were, so when I wrote about Elphaba in Wicked 30 years ago, published 30 years ago this year, my one of my realest, one of my deepest ambitions, was to make her as human as possible, and there was less like a stereotype that we could reduce as possible. And therefore it meant I had to bequeath her with complications of character, as we all have, not simplistic. You know, what is the the Miller Briggs, the Meyer Briggs character does I wanted her to to be represented by every one of those 16 blocks, because we are, we all have everything. So she could be political, she could be romantic, she could be ornery and selfish. She could be selfless and brave and cowardly. You know, as we all be, all of those. But one thing that I had to make sure that she could be is a person of both doubt and a person of hope, because that is, again, the twin states of the human soul. Blake called them innocence and experience. But I think you can use his, his little buckle, to describe our complications as human beings for almost any pair of attributes. And in my case, you know, doubt and faith are a pair of attributes that Elphaba strives for. She makes loud and kind of cutting juvenile statements about not having a soul, but you as a reader have to say, What is she saying? Does she mean this? Is she telling truth? Is she betraying a need, an appetite, a fear, maybe all of those things at once? That's what art does they make us? It makes us a. Ask questions like that. And so if you take that in, then when you get to the end of wicked, the novel, which ends very differently than wicked, the play or wicked the movie, will end. You realize the last action in the story of a woman who has been searching for half the novel for forgiveness is to have to face the fact that Dorothy is asking her for forgiveness, and she is being asked for the one thing that she needs herself and it. And then Dorothy splashes her with a bucket of water, which I consider a kind of baptismal splash. Wow, she and she does it in my novel not to kill her, but to save her. Because of a bit of her burning broom has actually fallen on her skirts, and she's about to go up in flames, and Dorothy is rescuing her by paying her attention and by trying to douse the flames. That, of course, reduces her to wherever, whatever she's reduced to, but it also may liberate her in the last instant of her life and transport her toward soulfulness, if you at some it may not, either it may just be, either she may have just melted, or she may have fallen through a trap door. You know, we kind of, we never really know, but it's but all those things are possibilities. And I didn't realize. I didn't set up the whole novel for 407, pages to get to that point. I didn't realize that was going to happen until I was writing the last five pages and Dorothy found the bucket, and then I saw, Oh, this is what this has been about all along. Wow. She wants the fullness of being alive. And as a human being, you can't be fully alive without a soul.

Wil Fisher  36:52  
So good. Wow. That's so I'm also just taken by this idea that you got to discover that in your process of that story making, is that typical for you, that maybe even with your memoir, that some of it's coming through like, Oh, I'm doing this because of this message.

Gregory  37:10  
Well, that's the only reason to be a writer. As far as I'm concerned, it's that it unpacks the secret, locked, locked storerooms and dusty corners of your own past and your own thinking the only way to find out what it is for me, because I want I'm pretty glib, but I'm not I'm not particularly intellectual. For me, my journey of self discovery is through my creative subconscious, and I follow it, and I try to notice what I see you try to pay attention to what my creative subconscious tells me, and it's always smarter than I am,

Wil Fisher  37:47  
though I rely on it that's beautiful. It's almost like writing as an act of prayer or or art as an act of meditation

Gregory  37:57  
that's perfectly said. And I do believe I would stand behind both of those definitions, not, not everything. I mean, I wrote. I wrote a book once called Six haunted hairdos. I don't think that was particularly, it might have been a little drag, but it wasn't particularly

Wil Fisher  38:13  
the deepest prayer for,

Gregory  38:19  
but I, but I, you know, we all there are one thing that I often say, Wil, right? Wil, yep, one thing I often say, Wil, is that there are many ways to suffer as there are human bodies on the planet. We all suffer independently, and we all suffer alone, even if we recognize scraps and aspects of our suffering and others, if suffering is a is a unitary experience, I think the corollary of that is there are as many ways to pray as there are human beings on the planet. And I think that whether whether the concept of prayer or the idea of it is consciously important to us or not, unless you're a sociopath or or severely ill cognitively in some other ways that our intention is to Motor our our way through any hour with with intentionality, with a motive toward accomplishment, and with a belief that accomplishment is possible, even if it's just accomplishing. I'm going to find two apples that aren't rotten to feed to My Starving Children. All those are acts of prayer. I believe there's many ways to pray as there are people who have to struggle through any given day of their lives. I love

Wil Fisher  39:49  
that message. Thank you. Yeah, so let's see as we wrap up, I know we've got the next movies coming out, so I imagine you're bracing for another. Uh, entourage of, yeah, attention and energy towards this story. What are some of your hopes or anticipations around how folks will receive wicked for good, and maybe specifically around the questions that you're hoping folks will receive from it? I don't know how closely connected you are to the production or how aware you are what they're going to present, but,

Gregory  40:23  
yeah, well, I do. I do know a couple of very small spoilers that I won't share, but I have, I've always taken a very distant back. You know when, when the limousine of wicked has been coursing down the highway, I usually wait for the city bus and have to make two or three transfers, you know. And that's intentional that I think is healthier for me and and easier for the company. I do feel that when wicked part one came out last November, by the time I saw it on the screen, I had almost seen too too many trailers, and I'd almost seen too much of the design and too much of the performances they shared very little of the musical performances wil in the trailers. But even though the movie was delicious, delectable to me, and I saw it about seven times in theaters, I still was sorry that I had seen so much. So this time round, I am scrupulously turning my head and not clicking on the trailers, and I'm not reading the stories, and I'm not checking out the blogs of people deconstructing what the trailers are hinting at. I don't want, I want to go in as close to being a virgin as I remember what it used to be like, and so I'm, I'm liberated from that. I also think that to the extent that I was needed, or my publishers needed me to put myself front and center. Last fall, I did a lot of press. I did national press, I did national photo shoots. It was overwhelming. And I'm actually a fairly shy person. You wouldn't know it, but I am, and so I don't want to do that this time. And this is, this is not the end of my career, nor is my memoir, I hope, the last thing that'll ever write. But I'm definitely on the, you know, at the, you know, approaching the landing strip of what I'm able to do in my four score years and 10. So, in fact, I think four square four square years and 10 and was basically

Wil Fisher  42:45  
I'm at like 50, right? It means 70. Oh, 70. Okay, okay, yeah, I think a score is 20. I believe Oh, it scores 20. Okay, okay, yeah, unless I'm wrong.

Gregory  42:56  
But at any rate, I'm going to continue to write while my brain is still functional, because, as I've told you, that's how I think, it's how I process, it's how I pray, it's all I siphon off extraordinary anxiety about where we are in the world and where I am in my own life. But all that being said, I feel I don't need any more attention in this life from anyone other than the people whom I love and many, many people I love. I've been blessed with brothers and sisters and with a wonderful husband and with several former boyfriends and kids and many, many, many close friends, all of whom cherish me and I recognize it. I don't need I don't need Vanity Fair to come with the photo crew. I don't need to have Rouge put on my my sallow cheeks. I don't need cherry red on my lips to make me look like a harlot. I'm not doing that drag. I am just my own quiet, shabby, little gray self and back in Dorothy's house and sit down and be gray.

Wil Fisher  44:11  
You can hold the door open

Gregory  44:13  
just like I just like I tried not to be when my father was walking up to work in his gray suit. I guess I'm going to live in Dorothy's Gray House, but I will always look out the window at Munchkin land and be grateful it exists, and be grateful it existed for me in my life too.

Wil Fisher  44:27  
Oh, that's so beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. Any final words of wisdom questions you want to leave the listeners with any any final thoughts and no pressure if you feel complete, that's wonderful.

Gregory  44:41  
Well, I will say this one thing, because I did. I did mention that at one point I had been curious about and really wanted to be a priest about 2021, in fact, I applied to a couple of seminaries, and then I went off to Europe, and when I came back, I had a job. I guess reunion with a young priest friend of mine, who was, I'm sure I was wanting to emulate him, and that was part of why I thought, well, I could be, I could be like you. I could, could have a life of value and and of contribution in the priesthood, because I like people, I love people, and I believe in prayer and the goodness of God and all that. So I talked to him about it, and he said to me, Gregory, don't do it. And I said, Really, why? And he said, The church is a wonderful place for people to throw their lives energies into, but you have more to give than the church will allow you to give. Church wil ask you to denature yourself in order to do its work, and you are too full of creative lust, you know, to to cut your gift down in the service of God. Let your let your gift flourish. Give to the world that way, in a way he was saying, go undercover. You don't need ordination to do the good work that you feel you're called to do. It by being the best writer you can be composer, and I did everything, and I painted, I composed, I wrote songs, I played, and that was one of the best pieces of advice that was ever given me. Even though I loved the church and I admired the people I knew it was, it was a time in the church when I was I happened to be very lucky and live in a very liberal, progressive parish in the most progressive diocese in America at that time. So what I saw of the church was sort of like the Obama rebels, you know, nice and and that's what it felt like to me, that's what I thought I was going to be joining. But he was a little bit older, and he recognized there were more shackles being attached in ordination than I was aware of, and he advised me against it. That was some that was one of the best pieces of advice I ever got in my life. And so to close, when you ask, is there anything more you'd like to say, I'd say draw your wisdom from whatever voice is speaking most clearly to your interior, past your own systems of drag or draglessness. It's your job to listen to the clearest voice, and that will tell you what to do, how to be holy and how to pay attention to your life.

Wil Fisher  47:45  
Beautiful. Thank you so much. Yeah, and I hear in that too, this invitation to find your prayer, find the way that you are meant to pray in this world.

Gregory  47:57  
That's a good way to put it. Yes, that's a better way to put it, indeed.

Wil Fisher  48:01  
Well, it came also from you saying that there's so many people and so many ways to pray it's like so Find it. Find what's right for you.

Gregory  48:08  
Right? You'll know it. You'll know it. Every now and then we get a scrap of it and we get a little bubble for four seconds of and it goes away. That's okay. Relish four seconds and remember it,

Wil Fisher  48:21  
it's the pulse. Ah, yes, beautiful. Thank you so much. This has been such a joy.

Gregory  48:26  
Oh, well, my pleasure wil I don't do this very much, and the only reason I agreed to do this was because the subject really is interesting to me. The intersectionality of of sexuality, creativity and faith really is something I think about all the time. I don't know how they affect each other, but I do know they're related. So so here we are