Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | May 28, 2026
Cynthia Erivo gave a really interesting interview to Variety this week. The actress is currently doing the most intense job of her career, playing 23 different characters in a one-woman West End production of Dracula. On the big-screen, she'll soon be seen in the film adaptation of the YA bestseller Children of Blood and Bone and the intense drama Prima Facie. As an EGOT nominee who has tried her hand at practically everything, she's showing no signs of slowing down. But she is hoping to move onto a new chapter of her life after the two-year press cycle of Wicked. Playing Elphaba and being on every green and pink carpet for such a long peirod of time has been pretty exhausting, and she's ready to move on from defying gravity. Let her keep her feet on the ground for a bit!
When Variety asked her to do the "Defying Gravity" riff for video, she kindly asked if they could talked about something else. "Because I feel like I've spent the last two years talking about it, and I think that we have an opportunity to talk about something else. And I love 'Wicked,' but I've just talked about it ad nauseam."
Good for her, honestly. I've already seen some people claim she's being rude or ungrateful but I don't think she is in the slightest. Again, she was promoting those movies for well over two years straight and has said everything there is to be said about that green make-up and weird sex cardigan.
Her pushback also makes sense in the context of the full Variety interview. She candidly discusses how people spent all that time doing body language dissections of her friendship with co-star Ariana Grande, and the backlash they faced for being so over-exposed. As she put it, "It's very interesting, watching what people's perception is verses what the reality actually is. Lots of psychologists seated at home deciding who we were, what we were going through, what we were doing, and why."
This extended to the red carpet incident where some "prankster" creep jumped onto the carpet at the second film's Singapore premiere and grabbed Grande. Erivo jumped in to protect her friend, who has dealt with PTSD for years following a bombing at one of her concerts. "What people couldn't see is that he wouldn't let go [of Grande.] He wouldn't let go. So I just kept pushing at him to get off." That moment of heroism and support for her friend led to what Erivo described as some "insidious" comments on her body and status as a queer Black woman. "That's what was being made fun of. It was my physique; it was my shape; it was the fact that I was bald; it was what I looked like." She's right. Some people got very racist in describing Erivo as a large aggressive bodyguard for Ariana (both women are actually tiny.) Some loser grabbed Cynthia's friend and colleague, and her being protective was spun as "aggressive". It wasn't subtle.
I highly recommend you read the full interview. Erivo is canny, smart about the industry, and open in discussing how the Wicked cycle impacted her. Everyone else was ready to move on from Wicked, so why not let her do so as well?
