Vincent D’Onofrio as Frank Morgan / The Wizard in Emerald City (NBC photo)
More than a few television critics have noted that The Wizard of Oz in the limited-run television series Emerald City bears a striking resemblance to Orson Welles.
It’s not much of a stretch since The Wizard in NBC’s reimagining of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is played by the multi-talented Vincent D’Onofrio. The 57-year-old Brooklyn native had a memorable role as Welles in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood and went on to write, produce and star in the short Five Minutes, Mr. Welles.
Episode 6 of Emerald City, Beautiful Wickedness, which aired on February 3, cemented the Welles connection as it examined the backstory of D’Onofrio’s character. Back in 1996, The Wizard was just Frank Morgan, an unhappy worker at Vortex Research Laboratory in Topeka. Morgan carries with him to work a book on Orson Welles.
Entertainment Weekly wrote: “Frank Morgan’s self-loathing is so painfully evident that he compensates by telling everyone how ‘great and powerful’ he is, while cloaking himself in a bad wig and a poor Orson Welles impersonation.”
Series director Tarsem Singh has described The Wizard as “a fake guy, completely insecure and down.”
“Nobody does pathetic like (D’Onofrio) and at the same time, a person who’s speaking big and grand, who thinks he’s Orson Welles,” he told The Los Angeles Times. “There is just nobody who can do that range more than D’Onofrio.”
The series airs on Friday nights on NBC.
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