Cynthia Erivo pulled back the curtain on the challenges of filming Jon M. Chu’s highly anticipated adaptation of Wicked.

During a November 15 appearance on the Sentimental men podcast, the 37-year-old Oscar nominee revealed that she often goes 12 to 14 hours without using the restroom during long production days.

Erivo, who plays the film’s Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba, recalled the physically demanding process of donning a costume and harnesses for the film’s complex stunt sequences. “There were two or three different harnesses for different stunts,” she explained, noting that they were worn over her corset and costume.

“Those days were really interesting because once you’re in the harness, you don’t want to get out of it because it takes forever to get everything ready again – the wires and so on,” Erivo explained. “These days can be really important. They can be very exhausting because your body is subjected to the strangest things.

To avoid the lengthy process of putting on and taking off the costume, Erivo opted to skip bathroom breaks altogether, even on filming days that began at 7 or 8 a.m. and extended late into the evening.

“I don’t go to the bathroom,” she admitted. “Once I’m in my costume – and this is probably a really bad idea – and the harness is on, I don’t do it. I don’t care about it. There are too many layers. She added with a shrug, “That’s how it is.”

Even when crew members asked him to step down, Erivo refused. “No, I don’t need to go to the bathroom,” she remembers telling them. “Let’s go. Let’s go. We’re in.”

The much awaited Wicked The musical, starring Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda, brings the iconic stage production of Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman to the big screen. The musical, meanwhile, is based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, which reimagines the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West from the novel by L. Frank Baum. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its legendary 1939 film adaptation.

Divided into two parts, the film delves into Elphaba’s life as a gifted young woman at Shiz University, where she meets Glinda, her eventual roommate and unlikely friend. The two navigate their bond until a burgeoning evil separates them, paving the way for the story that audiences have cherished for generations.

With its first opus scheduled to hit theaters on November 22, Wicked promises to delve deeper into the origins of Oz’s most iconic characters.