Marissa Bode

Marissa Bode is an American actress and disability advocate best known for playing Nessarose Thropp in Universal's two-part Wicked film adaptation. She is the first wheelchair user to take that role on screen, a piece of casting that landed her opposite Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in one of the biggest film events of the decade.

At 26, Bode has built a public profile that runs on two tracks at once. There is the acting, which so far means two Wicked films and the enormous visibility that comes with them. And there is the advocacy, which has made her a steady voice on accessibility in Hollywood, air travel and the arts. She speaks at universities, calls out institutions by name, and does it in a voice that is funny, blunt and unmistakably her own.

Her Instagram bio reads "Actor and Artist," and she means both. Fans respond to someone who treats a blockbuster franchise as a starting point rather than a destination. [edit]

Mazomanie, Wisconsin, is a village of fewer than 2,000 people in Dane County, about 25 minutes northwest of Madison. That is where Marissa Bode grew up, and it is the kind of place where a kid with big ambitions has to build her own stage. She started acting around age eight, working in plays and musicals well before any camera was involved. Regional theater credits from those years include Little Shop of Horrors, the sort of production that teaches a young performer how to hold a room.

The practical problem was access. Bode is a wheelchair user, and community and school theater in rural Wisconsin was not built with her in mind. She has talked about the reality of that: auditioning for parts that were never written for a wheelchair user, and having to make the case that she could do them anyway. That experience shaped how she thinks about representation now. She is not interested in disabled characters being handled as metaphors or plot mechanics.

Formal training came at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York, where she studied musical theater. AMDA is a conservatory-style program with a heavy audition and performance load, and it gave her the technical grounding that a small-town theater scene could not. After graduating she moved to Los Angeles and began the usual grind of self-tapes, classes and small auditions.

The Wicked casting came through that process. Jon M. Chu's team was looking for a Nessarose who could carry the character's disability with honesty, and Bode's audition put her in the room. She has said the role felt like the first time a production was actively looking for what she could bring rather than working around it. [edit]

Bode's screen debut was a principal role in Wicked (2024), directed by Jon M. Chu and adapted from the Broadway musical. She played Nessarose Thropp, Elphaba's younger sister, sharing scenes with Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande and Michelle Yeoh. The film opened in November 2024 and became one of the highest-grossing releases of the year, which meant Bode went from unknown to recognizable in a matter of weeks. She returned for Wicked: For Good in November 2025, completing the two-part adaptation.

Since then her public work has leaned hard into advocacy. In March 2026 she spoke at Boston College on disability visibility in the arts. On April 10, 2026, Bucknell University announced she would headline its spring Student Lectureship, and she delivered that address later in the semester. That same month, on April 24 and 25, she posted that she had been "denied boarding a flight because I'm disabled," describing it as "blatant segregation." Variety, People, Entertainment Weekly and Them all covered it, and within days the airline opened an internal investigation and said it would review its accessibility procedures.

September 2026 brought a different kind of headline. Bode called out Ed Sheeran for staying silent after Macklemore was dropped from the Loop Tour over his "Free Palestine" remarks, writing that "my legs may not work like they used to before, but at least I have a f***ing spine." The line traveled fast. In October 2026 the Wisconsin State Legislature honored her with an official citation, timed to a return visit to Mazomanie. [edit]

Bode's public voice is direct, funny and unbothered by decorum when something needs calling out. Her Instagram is a mix of red-carpet footage, behind-the-scenes moments and blunt commentary on accessibility, all delivered in a tone that reads more like a friend texting than a publicist's statement. The "Disabled babbyyy" bio sets the register: she refuses to be solemn about her own disability while still treating access as a serious fight.

On the red carpet she leans toward clean, structured looks, often with dramatic sleeves or a strong shoulder, and she has been photographed in a wheelchair that is styled as part of the outfit rather than hidden. That choice matters. Fashion media has picked up on it, and she has talked about wanting disabled bodies to be visible in glamour contexts, not just in documentary ones. She is perceived in the press as an advocate first and an actress second, which she has not pushed back against. [edit]

iFANN has not yet collected fame data for Marissa Bode, so there is no published placement to report for her as of the October 2026 rankings cycle. That is a statement about the data, not about her reach. The Wicked films put her in front of a global audience, and her advocacy work in 2026 kept her in entertainment headlines for reasons that had nothing to do with the franchise. She is also not on the September 2026 iFAMOUS Rankings flagship list.

The fanbase around her has no formal name and no organized structure. What exists instead is a loose, engaged audience that arrived through Wicked and stayed for her commentary. They show up in the comments of her Instagram posts, which had roughly 136,000 followers at last indexing, and they tend to be vocal about accessibility issues after she raises them. When she posted about being denied boarding in April 2026, the response was not a fandom campaign but something closer to a public pressure wave, with disabled travelers and allies sharing their own airline stories underneath her post.

Bode engages back in a specific way. She answers comments, reposts fan art from her art account, and treats her platform as a place to organize rather than just promote. The relationship is less idol-and-admirer than it is advocate-and-community, which is unusual for someone whose breakout role came in a musical blockbuster. [edit]

Her surname is pronounced BOH-dee, which trips up a surprising number of people who have only seen it in print.

She runs a separate Instagram account dedicated to her visual art, distinct from the main @marissa_edob page where she posts acting work and advocacy. Her main bio reads "Actor and Artist" alongside the self-deprecating tag "Disabled babbyyy."

The Ed Sheeran line from September 2026 was a deliberate callback to his own lyric "my legs don't work like they used to before," from "Thinking Out Loud." Fans immediately clocked the reference and the post spread well beyond her usual audience.

When the Wisconsin Legislature issued its citation in October 2026, the coverage focused on her coming home to Mazomanie, a village small enough that the return made local news before it made national news. A story fans still retell: the airline incident began with a single Instagram post and ended with a corporate investigation inside 72 hours. [edit]

Bode grew up in Mazomanie, Wisconsin, a small village in Dane County, and her family has stayed a quiet part of her public story rather than a headline. She has not named her parents or siblings in interviews, and she keeps that side of her life largely out of the press. What she has shared is the texture of the place: a tight rural community, a school system that was not always set up for a wheelchair user, and a family that backed her theater ambitions from the time she was about eight years old.

She now lives in Los Angeles. No spouse, partner or children are publicly documented. Her October 2026 return to Mazomanie for the legislative citation was covered by local Wisconsin outlets as a hometown moment, with the village turning out for someone who had left for Hollywood and come back with a state honor. [edit]

Bode has kept her romantic life entirely out of the public record. No credible outlet has confirmed a relationship, an engagement or a marriage, and she has not discussed dating in interviews. Search interest around a "partner" and around the name "Lauren Brooks" shows up in autocomplete and related queries, but none of it traces back to a verified report, and treating it as fact would be a mistake.

What is documented is a life built around work and advocacy. Her 2026 calendar was dominated by university lectureships, the airline accessibility fight and the Wisconsin citation, with no public appearances alongside a partner. As of 2026 she is privately single or simply undisclosed, and she has given no indication she intends to change that. [edit]

Marissa Bode's earnings are concentrated in a very short window. Her two Wicked films are her only credited feature work, and neither came with the kind of back-end deal that turns a supporting actor into a multimillionaire. Principal cast members in a franchise production typically earn a flat fee plus residuals, and for a relative newcomer in a supporting role that figure sits well below the headline salaries of Erivo or Grande. The films' box office performance does add residual income over time, particularly from streaming and home video.

The bigger financial story is the shift toward advocacy and speaking work. University lectureships, including the Bucknell Student Lectureship in 2026 and her Boston College appearance, are paid engagements, and her public profile after the April 2026 airline incident made her a sought-after voice on accessibility. That kind of work pays modestly per event but compounds: it builds a reputation that can lead to consulting, brand partnerships and documentary or hosting opportunities.

Research by the iFANN Editorial Team puts her current fortune at roughly $1 Million as of 2026. That estimate reflects her film fees, speaking income and the early stages of brand interest, not a large portfolio of investments or real estate. She is based in Los Angeles, where cost of living eats into earnings quickly. Her trajectory depends on what comes after Wicked: For Good: a steady acting career, a pivot into advocacy media, or both. [edit]