For those not in the know, Nollywood is the informal name given to the astoundingly prolific Nigerian film industry which, while producing some genuine classics in world cinema, is perhaps best known amongst the YouTube crowd for its output of direct-to-video, no-budget, so-bad-they’re-good flicks. (The intro parodies the industry’s long line of unlicensed, very unauthorized pop culture pilferings with action-packed box art for the Nollywood action thriller Beyoncé’s Revenge, among others.) “Nigerian Wicked” is one of those, with Erivo swapping roles as a handbag-obsessed Glinda and cast member Ayoade Bamgboye taking the Erivo’s Wicked role as an indifferently green-slathered Elphaba as they hit the road so the Wizard can give Elphaba that “gravity-defying” BBL she’s dreaming of.
The sketch is filled with in-camera magic spell effects, awkward melodrama (“Glinda doesn’t like egg, so their relationship is very strained” the narrator helpfully explains after one witch-on-witch standoff), and some of that trembling sexual tension Wicked fans have been shipping for so long. (Even if the film’s “Nigerian Wicked: LGBTQ!” tagline doesn’t go much beyond an abrupt face-slap.) It’s a pitch-perfect distillation of a kind of film the Nigerian-descended Erivo clearly knows very well, as she’s credited for her Wicked reprise under her full birth name, Cynthia Chinasaokwu Onyedinmanasu Owezuke Amarachukwu Echimino Erivo.
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