Twelve Days of Christmas: WICKED's Jon M. Chu & Bowen Yang

The holidays are upon us and BroadwayWorld is continuing our favorite annual tradition of celebrating the holiday season with a Twelve Days of Christmas countdown. This year we are featuring some of our favorite members of the 2024 Broadway scene to share some of her most cherished holiday songs, films, and performances. This year's coutdown is sponsored by Elf The Musical- running on Broadway through January 4 at the Marquis Theatre.

Elf The Musical is the hilarious and heartwarming tale of Buddy, a young orphan whose life is changed forever when he mistakenly crawls into Santa’s sack of toys one Christmas Eve. Raised by elves at the North Pole, Buddy’s enormous size and limited toy-making abilities make him realize he may not quite fit in! When he discovers he is actually human, Buddy embarks on a journey to New York City to find his birth father, and in turn, helps the Big Apple and the people he meets rediscover the true meaning of Christmas. Featuring a mistletoe-tapping score and a knockout cast – including a "terrific" (Deadline) Sean Astin (The Lord of the Rings) as Santa Claus and a "delightful and exuberant" (The New York Times) Grey Henson (Mean Girls, Shucked) as Buddy – this is one holiday charmer you won't want to miss. 

The Wicked film adaptation is already the event of the 2024 holiday season, and the man behind the magic is Jon M. Chu. In addition to creating the wonderful world of Oz for this much-anticipated release, he also directed the equally-anticiapted Part Two, which is due to hit movie theatres in November 2025.

On the red carpet for the film's NYC premiere, we asked Jon about his holiday traditions, which happen to include a song by Miss Galinda herself. "Well, we love watching Home Alone every year, but as for songs... [my favorite] is definitely 'Santa Tell Me,' by  Ariana Grande," said Chu. "That thing plays like gangbusters at our house!"

Grande's co-star and friend Bowen Yang echoed Chu's sentiments. "It's not just because she's here right now [luaghs], but I live for 'Santa Tell Me' by Ariana Grande, obviously!"

Chu is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is known as the director of the romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians (2018) and the musical fantasy Wicked (2024), the former being one of the first films by a major Hollywood studio to feature a majority cast of Asian descent. He has also directed the 2021 musical In the Heights. Other films that he has directed often include musical elements, including the dance films Step Up 2: The Streets (2008) and Step Up 3D (2010), musicals Jem and the Holograms (2015), and the live concert films Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (2011) and Justin Bieber's Believe (2013). Wicked Part Two will arrive in movie theatres in November 2025. 

Yang is a comedian, writer, and actor based in Brooklyn, NY. He is currently a multi Emmy-nominated cast member on Saturday Night Live, where he wrote for one season before moving on-screen. In 2019 and 2021, Bowen was featured in TIME 100.  He has  also been seen on Comedy Central’s Awkwafina is Nora From Queens and in Paramount’s The Lost City, starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum.  Bowen has appeared in Searchlight Pictures comedy Fire Island and  Universal Pictures’ Bros with Billy Eichner.