Jeff Goldblum embraces positive change after taking on 'Wicked' role

Jeff Goldblum has opened up about the positive changes he’s experienced since taking on the role of the Wizard in the film adaptation of Wicked.

In an interview with the UK show The Morning, the 37-year-old actor revealed that his involvement in the project led him to stop eating meat.

Goldbum stated, “It’s changed me”. He further elaborated, “After doing this movie, we talked about animal cruelty. I stopped eating meat and poultry. So this Christmas and Thanksgiving, I may be having something else”.

He continued, “I’m happy. We need the world to work for everybody on earth and every creature too”.

In the 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire that writer Winnie Holzman and composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz adapted into the 2003 stage musical, the Wizard is transformed from the blustery tyrant who ultimately softens to the plight of the wayward Kansan Dorothy Gale.

In Wicked, he’s a full tyrant, and the evil schemes he perpetrates with the help of the cruel Madame Morrible are unforgivable.

One of the musical’s dual protagonists, the libelously branded Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo), discovers that the Wizard and Morrible have connived to suppress the speaking powers of the realm’s animal denizens, subordinating them back into a state of beastly helplessness.

As for the Wizard and Morrible’s treachery, Goldblum and Yeoh have an… interesting theory on what might motivate their criminal collab.

“We met a while ago,” Goldblum postulated to Entertainment Weekly in March. “The question is, when did I float in? How many years ago during this drought, which had something to do with this animal business? And what happened between us with that animal business, and how close were we?”

The actor thinks the characters “may have been deeply close to each other,” but teasing the forthcoming conclusion, he hints, “and as we see us now, we’re veering apart.”