Barbie, Wonka & Wicked - Crawley actor's remarkable hat-trick

After appearing in Barbie and Wonka last year, Todd is now on the cinema screens in the first part of Wicked. And the chances he will be in the second part as well when it comes out next year.

“I don't know of anyone else who is in all three but there must be,” Todd says. “I know people that have been in two of them separately but I would hate to say that I'm the only one. I would be wrong. Wicked was absolutely huge. There were so many, many people in it. But I'm the only one I know of that was in all three.”

And Todd allows himself to enjoy the sense of achievement: “It is an achievement. My brain can't quite comprehend the enormity of it. To me they're just individual jobs and that's what I do. I go from job to job but when you put the three together, it is impressive. Singularly each film was an amazing experience and I was extremely fortunate to be in three in a row and they were all great fun. I suppose they were all quite surefire hits. They were all mainstream but the fact is you never know with a film how it is going to be received and they have all been received extremely well.

“In Wonka I was part of the core ensemble in the whole film but Wicked was different because it was happening in lots of different places so they couldn't have the same actors in all the scenes in different parts of the land. I was lucky enough to be part of the Emerald City gang. There were 37 of us as core dancers and we had 250 dancers on top of that and then about 200 plus extras on top of that so there was easily 500 people in the Emerald City.

“The auditions were over self-tape and I heard they were starting to film different sections. I thought I hadn't got it. I waited for a year until the telephone call and then I got a call saying that they wanted me for the One Short Day sequence. It was like everything was on hold. I didn't know I'd got it until then.”

They filmed in 2023 – and it was work of huge significance for Todd: “Wizard of Oz is my all-time favourite film. It's an iconic movie. I loved that film so much growing up, that whole fantasy of a different land over the rainbow, and then suddenly being an adult working on it, well I would have done it for free! Actually I would have paid to be in it!”

Part two the film comes out next year. The two films were filmed together, and Todd thinks there is a reasonable chance that he will be in the second one as well.

At the time of speaking Todd hadn’t yet seen Wicked on screen but was just about to. He is currently on the road with the international tour of Chicago, spending 12 weeks in China having also visited Taiwan and Taipei.