On Thursday, July 24, Brazil’s official production of Wicked: The Musical announced the casting of Gloria Groove. Groove will be playing Madame Morrible from August 23 to September 3, marking the first time a drag performer has been cast in an official production of Wicked. 

Madame Morrible is an antagonist of the 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, from which the movies and play are loosely based. She is the headmistress of Crage Hall at Shiz University, teaching a seminar on sorcery while acting as an associate of the Wizard of Oz.  

However, in the musical, Madame Morrible plays a central role, serving as the main antagonist rather than a henchwoman of the Wizard. She has been played by many actors in US productions of the musical, including Sheryl Lee Ralph, Rue McClanahan, and Alexandra Billings, a trans woman who performed the role from 2019 to 2022. 

Brazilian actors who have played the role before Groove include Diva Menner and Karin Hils.

In the 2024 film series adaptation of the musical starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, Madame Morrible is played by Michelle Yeoh. In these films, Madame Morrible is the Dean of Sorcery Studies rather than the headmistress. 

Groove is a Brazilian drag queen and a singer-songwriter. She has a little over 6 million monthly listeners on Spotify. 

Groove was born in 1995 in São Paulo to a family of musicians, so it was only natural that she started auditioning for singing roles at the age of seven. Groove was also a voice actor for a considerable amount of her career, dubbing characters like Rico Suave from Hannah Montana, Mickey Kudo from Digimon Fusion, and Justin Bieber from Never Say Never. 

By 17, she had adopted the moniker Gloria Groove as a reference to hymns in Brazilian Protestant churches and the musical term that shared the same name. She released her first song, ‘Dona’, in early 2016, and the music video hit 7.7 million views. 

Currently, Groove has three albums out and has described her singer persona as both a “female queer” and “male rapper” with inspiration from genres like soul, trap, Brazilian funk, and R&B.