The surprising reason Dorothy’s slippers aren’t red in ‘Wicked’

The ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz” became nearly as iconic as the film itself. So why were the slippers silver in “Wicked”?

Some sharp-eyed fans noticed the change in the film adaptation of the Broadway show starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.”

And as it turns out, the choice to include the silver slippers was actually staying true to the original source text: In L. Frank Baum’s book “The Wizard of Oz,” the magic slippers were, in fact, silver.

“They’re not ruby,” “Wicked” costume designer Paul Tazewell said in an interview with People. “In the book, they were these odd little silver boots.”

Tazewell explained he took what happened in Maguire’s novel as a starting point for his creation that ended up in the film.

In “Wicked” the book, Nessarose is described as wearing iridescent shoes that seem to “pulse with hundreds of reflections and refractions.” Glinda later enchants the shoes to help Nessarose walk (though in the Broadway play, Elphaba is the one to cast the spell).

Marissa Bode, who plays Nessarose in “Wicked,” ultimately wears silver heels with swirls and sparkles in the film, paying homage to the original while also wearing something unique to the film, Tazewell said.

“There’s the idea of Cinderella and the glass slipper, and then it’s like how we make shoes a myth and how we’ve indulged them into our fantasy fairytale storytelling,” he said.

In the 1939 film, the move from silver to sparkly red was a stylistic change made to emphasize the contrast between the yellow brick road and Dorothy’s gorgeous heels.

“For the Technicolor movie, costumers created ruby red shoes to show up more vividly against the yellow-brick road,” reads the Smithsonian description of a pair of the ruby slippers used in the film and now housed in the museum in Washington, D.C. Garland wore several pairs when making “The Wizard of Oz”; another of them is currently up for auction.

“Wicked” director Jon M. Chu also weighed in on the change in an interview with Variety, when he was asked if it was true that MGM, which produced “The Wizard of Oz,” had the copyright for both the ruby slippers and the yellow brick road. (TODAY has not independently confirmed MGM’s copyrights.)

“We had boundaries of what we could reference or not. We never use the ruby slippers,” Chu explained. “Nessa has on crystal slippers as in the Frank L. Baum book, Gregory Maguire book and the show.”

He continued: “I don’t think the phrase ‘yellow brick road’ is copywritten, but definitely the shape of the road is. We couldn’t do the spiral. We had to do a circle that continues to show it’s not where the road ends.”

Some eagle-eyed viewers may have noticed an Easter egg paying homage to “The Wizard of Oz” when Glinda, played by Grande, briefly grabs a pair of sparkly red slippers while she’s performing “Popular” in the film.

She gifts the shoes to Elphaba, portrayed by Erivo, promising her she’ll do everything she can to help make the future Wicked Witch of the West the most well-liked girl at Shiz.

It turns out the creators of “Wicked” have had the power to change the color of the iconic slippers all along, my dear.