Marissa Bode

Marissa Bode is an American actress born on August 28, 2000, in Mazomanie, Wisconsin — a small town most people can't place on a map without looking twice. She came up largely outside the traditional Hollywood pipeline, and that outsider trajectory seems to have shaped the kind of performer she's become: someone who doesn't rely on the usual shorthand. Bode, who uses a wheelchair and has been open about her disability identity, entered the public conversation in a significant way when she was cast in one of the most anticipated film productions of the past decade.

The role that changed everything for Bode is Nessa Thropp in Jon M. Chu's film adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked. Specifically, she appears as a younger version of the character — the sister of Elphaba, the green-skinned outcast at the story's center — and what's striking is how much Bode does with a part that could easily be reduced to a plot function. Nessa isn't a peripheral figure in the Wicked mythology; she carries real emotional weight, particularly in the way her relationship with her sister complicates any clean reading of power, privilege, and family loyalty. Bode brings a groundedness to those scenes that doesn't tip into sentimentality. The casting itself drew attention because Nessa, a wheelchair user in the source material, is here played by an actress who actually uses one — a choice that Variety reported was deliberate and meaningful to the production's approach.

Bode's work in Wicked arrived at a moment when the film industry was, slowly and unevenly, reconsidering how disability gets represented on screen. She's been vocal about that context without letting it define the totality of how she's discussed as a performer. Hard to say if she set out to be a spokesperson for anything — but she's become one anyway, partly because the role demanded it and partly because she's been willing to engage the conversation publicly. Her background doesn't include a long string of prior credits, which makes the Wicked casting feel less like a culmination and more like a genuine starting point.

The upcoming Wicked: For Good, the second installment of Chu's two-part adaptation, will bring Bode back to the role — and given where the story goes in its second half, Nessa's arc becomes considerably darker and more demanding. The source material doesn't spare her. What happens to Nessa in the later chapters of the Wicked narrative requires an actress who can hold grief and bitterness without making the character a villain by default, and there's enough in Bode's work in the first film to suggest she's capable of that. Wicked: For Good is scheduled for 2025, and it's the project that will most likely determine the shape of her next few years in the industry.

Right now, Bode sits in an unusual position — not quite an unknown, not yet a name that carries its own gravity when attached to a project, but somewhere in between, which is actually an interesting place to be. The franchise she's part of is enormous, the role is substantive, and she's handled the attention around it without seeming overwhelmed by it. What comes after Wicked: For Good is the real question. The range she gets to demonstrate in these two films is real, but it's also contained within one story, one world. Whether she moves into other genres, other kinds of material — that's still open.