Is Wicked 2’s Tin Man Suit Real Metal? Ethan Slater Sets the Record Straight
Ethan Slater endured five-hour prosthetic marathons to morph from Boq into the Tin Man for Wicked: For Good — and he finally settles the big question: is that suit actual metal?
If you were wondering whether Ethan Slater is actually under all that metal in Wicked: For Good (aka Wicked 2), the answer is yes — and it took a small eternity in the chair to make it happen.
It’s really him under there
Slater, who returns as Boq — and, by this point in the story, the Tin Man — broke down the transformation in a chat with Parade. He confirmed it is not a digital face swap or some floating head situation. It’s him, acting through layers of prosthetics, with the effects team letting his expressions do the work.
"That’s my face moving. If I lifted an eyebrow, the eyebrow lifted. If I twitched my cheek, my cheek twitched. So I was really acting through the prosthetics, and they didn’t have to change it in post-production at all."
So what’s CGI and what’s not? According to Slater, the only digital assist went to the Tin Man joints. Everything else you’re looking at is practical makeup and prosthetic work.
The daily grind (and how they sped it up)
Early in the shoot, it took about five hours a day to build the Tin Man on top of him. By the end, the team had shaved that down to under three hours — a minor miracle for anyone who’s ever tried to drink coffee while glued to a chair. Slater credits makeup prosthetic designers Mark Coulier and Stephen Murphy, plus Frances Hannon, for getting lightning-fast as filming went on.
- Character: Slater returns as Boq, who appears as the Tin Man in this second installment
- Practical vs. digital: his face and performance are all practical; CGI was used only for the Tin Man joints
- Makeup time: started at about 5 hours per day, dropped to under 3 by the end of the shoot
- Artists: Mark Coulier, Stephen Murphy, and Frances Hannon led the prosthetic build
- Days in full Tin Man mode: roughly 20, per Slater on SiriusXM’s The Morning Mash Up
Bottom line: Wicked: For Good is leaning hard on practical makeup for the Tin Man, and Slater’s doing the performance from inside the metal look — no digital face-swapping, no post-production puppeteering. Just a lot of patience, glue, and a few very busy makeup artists.