Why Jodie Turner-Smith Was ‘Keen’ for Her 4-Year-Old To See Wicked

I mean … do we really have to explain? Of course Jodie Turner-Smith wanted her daughter Juno to see Wicked. Everyone wants to see the highly-anticipated movie, but Turner-Smith took a different approach. During an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Turner-Smith told the audience she “just needed” her little girl to see the brilliant Broadway play before seeing Wicked the movie.

“I know that she’s a bit young,” Turner-Smith said of her 4-year-old who she shares with ex-husband Joshua Jackson, “but I just kind of felt like Wicked is now about to be in the zeitgeist in a whole other way now that Cynthia Erivo is going to — undoubtedly has slayed this performance.”

“And now [Juno can] go, ‘Yeah, my mom took me to go see the play,'” Fallon said. “‘I was four and a half.'”

And c’mon … that’s got to get her some pretty good playground cred! … Right?! Although she might not be able to tell her friends much about the performance. “She had a lot of questions,” Turner-Smith said before admitting they hadn’t even watched The Wizard of Oz together yet.

“She must’ve been like, ‘What is going on?’ Oh my god,” Fallon joked.

“But, you know, I just love Wicked so much and it’s like my favorite musical,” the Bad Monkey actress continued, getting more animated and endearing by the second. “I just love it. And I was just eager. I was keen.”

And for anyone whose feathers are ruffled just thinking of the chaos a young kid could bring to a Broadway theater, Turner-Smith does not want to hear it. “I wasn’t the only one with a 4-year-old in there, I’ll say that,” she said.

Last month, Turner-Smith got candid about the reality of co-parenting with Jackson. “It’s an adjustment period for anyone when they split up with someone because you’re used to being with your child all the time,” Turner-Smith said. “But nobody hands you a manual.”

“Everyone’s trying to figure it out,” she continued. “Each parent has a different life, and especially if the reason why you’re splitting up is because you have different lives, it’s only further complicated by how you’re going to co-parent.”

And things have been complicated. While Juno is in school in Los Angeles with Jackson, Turner-Smith is filming The Agency in London. And so the actress — much like Wicked‘s Elphaba — is racking up some major frequent flier points with weekly trips across the pond.

“This is going to be the thing I look back on and think, ‘Wow, I survived that,’” Turner-Smith told Glamour at the time. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.” We’d say it’s her “Defying Gravity” moment.