‘Wicked’ star Kristin Chenoweth highlights love, acceptance at SLC’s RootsTech 2024 genealogy conference
Chenoweth grew up in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma — a suburb 20 minutes southeast of Tulsa. She was adopted when she was 5 days old by two chemical engineers, Junie and Jerry Chenoweth. “Ariana Grande is taking my role, and I’ve known her since she was 9,” Chenoweth said. “I was like, ‘Would there be a world that my little baby, Ariana, plays me?’ And this happened, and we both cried. And then Cynthia Erivo is one of the most spectacular artists of our time, this voice is otherworldly.”
“I need to talk to her — I need to know who sounds like a chipmunk, I need to know why I’m so short,” Chenoweth recalled thinking when Dunn persuaded her to meet her mother. “We were very, very close from the minute I met her. I walked in, she goes, ‘Wait a minute, you’re you.’” She acknowledged Saturday that her allyship for the gay, lesbian and transgender community, “doesn’t seem to go together with being a Christian.” But loving one another, Chenoweth said, is what Christians are supposed to do.