‘Wicked’s’ Gay Catholic Author Continues Explaining His Journey of Faith and Identity

Gregory Maguire (Photo by Helen Maguire Newman )

Much has been written about gay-positive messages in the blockbuster film Wicked, which this past Sunday won two of the ten Academy Awards for which it was nominated. Much less, however, has been written about the gay Catholic influences on the film’s story which focuses on an imagined “backstory” for the Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West. 

Gregory Maguire, author of the novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, upon which the musical show is based, recently gave an interview to The National Catholic Reporter to discuss the ongoing impact of Wicked, the intersections of faith and sexuality, and the function of both silence and story-telling, especially when it comes to the stories of LGBTQ+ Catholics. 

Maguire has previously drawn connections between his experiences as a gay Catholic and the inspiration for his 1995 best-seller in a reflection for Bondings 2.0 last December. In the new interview withNCR contributor Maxwell Kuzma, Maguire outlined the implications of those connections. He reflected upon the process of integrating faith and sexuality as a gay Catholic man as one involving careful discernment and attentiveness to all aspects of one’s identity:

“I grew up in a progressive enough circle that the consideration of any kind of sexuality, even straight sexuality, was presented as a potential gift. It could also be a potential temptation, but it was a potential gift. And so you would have to use the tools of faith to slowly and carefully separate those segments that might harm you from those segments that might nourish you, and to braid for yourself a way to be in the world that neither denies your inclination toward faith nor your inclination toward love — which, after all, are very close.”

Experiencing this process of “braiding” led to Maguire’s development of Wicked’s protagonist, Elphaba, who “has a hard time trying to braid herself into a self-loving, effective minister of good.” 

Just as the identity formation of characters like Elphaba were influenced by Maguire’s personal experience as a gay Catholic, likewise the larger themes of the story continue to reflect situations of oppression faced by many marginalized groups–including LGBTQ+ people– in such a way that many have dubbed ‘prophetic’. Commenting on his original intention, Maguire remarked:

“I was asking people to think: How would you identify something as evil? If somebody down the street does something, how quickly would you say that’s wicked, that’s evil? And what would you mean by that?

“Well, I did not set out to be prophetic. Believe me, honey. But I would hope that there is even more there than is yet exhumed that will continue to nourish people in ways that perhaps I can’t even consider right now.”

Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, the young Wicked Witch of the West, in the movie “Wicked.”

Further reflecting on Wicked’s themes and the current circumstances faced by the LGBTQ+ community, Maguire noted how silence can be a double-edged sword–at times a tool of oppression when there is a refusal to speak up for justice, at other times a mode of silent support. Maguire sees examples of each present within the Catholic Church:

“I love the Catholic Church and I love my faith . . . but they have done massive amounts of harm by refusing to be honest about the variety of human experiences. As much as I am a defender of my own faith, I can call out grave crimes against charity, grave crimes against the Christian message of inclusion and of supporting each other.

“I’ve had quite a few friends in the clergy and in the orders that I later realized were gay or lesbian, but they did not reference it. They were bright, warm spirits of tolerance and open mindedness. There was a lot of tacit and silent support. Just as silence can be menacing and annihilating, there is also silent support that is nourishing. You are actually part of an underground before you recognize that that’s where you are. If I had entered the priesthood, which I thought strongly about doing, I would have become one of those silent supporters.”

Just as silence has its place, so too can storytelling have a significant impact, particularly when it comes to uplifting the marginalized. To have “any impact at all,” according to Maguire, stories must offer “both challenge and comfort.” Maguire said:

“You need to feel like you’re both a part of a community and that your independence and your individuality is just as valued as your community membership. . . . It is not enough just to be an individual. You are also a member of your community, and it’s not enough to be a faceless member of your community. You bring your individuality to make that community stronger. Stories do that.

“And a third thing: You need to be confirmed in your understanding of yourself as a complex human being, not a simple one. A story does not fit as a tagline on the front of a baseball cap. A story has to be lived in, and it has to be processed.”

Especially in times that are fraught, story-tellers have the capacity to “[feed] hunger, in more and deeper ways than [they] recognize.” For LGBTQ+ Catholics, like Maguire, to live, process, and share our unique stories and allow our experiences to guide us has the potential to feed others, in more ways than one. 

–Phoebe Carstens, New Ways Ministry, March 6, 2025

To read the entire NCR interview with Gregory Maguire, click here.

To read Gregory Maguire’s reflection for Bondings 2.0, click here. 

To read about Cynthia Erivo’s experience of faith as a bisexual Catholic, click here.