‘Wicked’ Casting Directors Talk Recruiting Jonathan Bailey (Exclusive)

Wicked‘s casting directors are reflecting on the work they put in to cast Jonathan Bailey.

When Bernard Telsey and Tiffany Canfield, the casting directors behind the two-part Wicked movie musical, caught up with PEOPLE at the Wicked: For Good premiere in New York City on Monday, Nov. 17, the pair said casting Bailey’s role as Fiyero in particular proved to be “a hard process.”

“We knew who Johnny was because we saw him in Company on the West End,” Telsey says. “It’s our job to follow actors even if we don’t know him personally or we haven’t seen him on a regular basis. But he was coming through New York way before we started, and we sat down and did a general with him. And I remember [saying] ‘Tiffany, that guy should be Fiyero, right?’ ”

Telsey adds that the pair “just didn’t give up” on casting Bailey, even when PEOPLE’s Sexiest Man Alive “had three other jobs at the same time,” as Telsey remembers. 

“A lot of people told us he was not available and we just would not take no for any reason,” Canfield adds. Telsey notes that Bailey’s manager Duncan Millership was important in bringing the actor on board. “We all just kept trying and, bingo, the clouds opened up and he’s in it,” he says.

Bailey, of course, shared the footage from his self-taped audition to play Fiyero in Wicked during NBC’s Wicked: One Wonderful Night special on Thursday, Nov. 6. The actor filmed the audition tape exactly five minutes before he went on stage for an unrelated performance on London’s West End.

“When [the self tape came in, we] were like, ‘That’s what we need,’ ” Canfield adds of Bailey’s audition. “The cheekiness, the humor, but the real humanity too. The real vulnerability.”

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Bailey has been acting for the screen since he was a child in the late 1990s, but he began rising to prominence with his starring role in Bridgerton in 2020. Outside of the Wicked movies — and his Sexiest Man Alive title — he also recently costarred with Scarlett Johansson in this year’s Jurassic World Rebirth.

“You know, I think the role is pretty sexy. No, I think we’ll say yes,” Telsey says with a laugh, when asked if he feels he and Canfield are responsible for Bailey’s Sexiest Man Alive title. “It just sounds good to say yes, but no, of course not. Again, it was one of those — it’s the right timing and he’s just so deserving of all of it.”

Wicked: For Good is now in theaters.