Warning: This story contains spoilers for Wicked: For Good.

Life’s more painless for the brainless — but being a scarecrow isn’t all fun and games.

Jonathan Bailey, who plays Fiyero in the Wicked films, has detailed how he pulled off his character’s painstaking transformation into the Scarecrow in Wicked: For Good.

“It was all prosthetics,” the Bridgerton star said in a new interview with U.K. Esquire, noting that his final look was always on his mind. “The first thing that I started thinking about, even before the ‘Dancing Through Life’ choreography, was exactly what the Scarecrow would look like.” 

Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero and Ariana Grande as Glinda in ‘Wicked: For Good’.

Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

Bailey added that finalizing Fiyero’s patchwork makeover took some creative thinking but was ultimately achieved with practical effects. “There were loads of makeup tests,” he said. “But it was all real. There was a lot of plumbing under the skin to try and keep me cool.”

The Jurassic World Rebirth star also indicated that the Scarecrow’s Triscuit-faced appearance seemed disturbingly incomplete without every detail in place. “Without the straw hair, I just looked like a big wheat penis,” he said.

At a pivotal moment in the sequel, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) casts a spell on Fiyero in a desperate attempt to protect him from the pain and injury inflicted by the Wizard’s henchmen. Though Wicked: For Good shows brief glimpses of Bailey’s character transforming, viewers don’t fully see his face until the closing moments of the movie, when he reunites with Elphaba after she fakes her death.

Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero in ‘Wicked” For Good’.

Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

Director Jon M. Chu broke down his interpretation of the couple’s climactic reunion, in which the metamorphosed Fiyero pounds on a trapdoor concealing the witch, in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly.

“I think she does know that he’s alive, of course, and that he’s become this thing,” Chu speculated of Elphaba’s awareness of Fiyero’s physical evolution. “But I don’t think she’s seen who he is for sure until she looks at him there. It’s a different idea of knowing that he’s turned into the thing and then seeing him. And I think maybe there’s a little bit of guilt of ‘Did I do the right thing?’ And then he’s reassuring her — like, ‘You saved my life.'”

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Chu also explained how Bailey and Erivo set the tempo for their reunion scene. “They took their time with that moment. I mean, that’s all them,” the filmmaker said. “I didn’t know how quick or slow it should be … the uncomfortable silence, the exploration of each other. It was just beautiful to experience.”

Wicked: For Good is playing now in theaters.

Additional reporting by Patrick Gomez.