In Act Two of Wicked, Nessarose becomes the Governor of Munchkinland following the death of her father. Boq effectively becomes her love slave, but announcing he has feelings for Glinda, an enraged Nessarose casts a love spell on him from Elphaba's Grimmerie.

“But we were never going for a witchy look,” she added about the making of Erivo’s character. “We were making it very real, very timeless and very connected to everybody. We weren’t going for the prosthetic fantasy version at all. Jon [M. Chu] always wanted everything real.”