Jonathan Bailey Has a Message for His School Bullies

Jonathan also made sure to give a little grace to the younger version of himself—as well as a younger version of E!’s Justin— saying, “I just know that little us would have loved seeing us now doing this.”

And all of that helped inform his portrayal of Fiyero on the big screen, especially as he found the character to be “far more serious” than Jonathan originally thought, which actually surprised him. 

“I think that’s what hopefully feels incredibly human,” he continued. “That we start off in early life and we can be careless and mindless and brainless. And perhaps with Fiyero that was a defense mechanism.”

But once his character met Elphaba “who’s calling out injustice and sees the world in a far more kind and rooted way,” he had to make a change and have, as Jonathan explained, a “quiet rebellion in the second film.”

And while he’s been busy with Wicked as of late, the 37-year-old—who was named People’s Sexiest Man Alive earlier this month—recently revealed that he would be taking a short break from acting after back-to-back projects like Bridgerton, Jurassic World Rebirth and the Wicked films.

“I’ve been working solidly for about three years now,” he told British GQ in September, “which has been amazing and mind-blowing.”

But Jonathan felt that “with everything happening in the world right now,” it made sense for him to “stop acting for a bit next year” and instead focus his attention on the Shameless Fund, a U.K.-based charity he founded which raises funds for non-profit organizations supporting the LGBTQ+ community by partnering with global brands.

“Over the next few months, I’ll be focusing on staffing and making sure we get all the right people in all the right places,” he shared. “There’s this statistic: out of every £100 raised in the U.K., only 1 [penny] goes to the LGBTQ+ community. You really have to dig to find solutions, and I genuinely think The Shameless Fund is exactly that.”

Despite taking a break from the screen, Jonathan is exceedingly grateful for all of the success he’s experienced throughout his career.

“You get to a point where you look back and you go, ‘Wow,’” he told People in November, “but you never for a second think that’s where you’re headed. You know, to be able to do things that you dream of.”

Wicked: For Good flies into theaters Nov. 21. 

For more stars making their own magic at the NYC premiere, keep reading.

(E! and Universal Pictures are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)