Cynthia Erivo Explains the Key Changes She Brought to ‘Wicked’

When British singer/actress Cynthia Erivo tackled Elphaba, the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West in “Wicked,” she was the first Black actress to play the role. That’s a key reason why her interpretation of the character played by so many stage actresses over the years is so different.

We talked on Zoom two days after her soaring performance of “Fly Me to the Moon” at the Grammys, which she attended with her partner Lena Waithe. “It was an amazing night,” she said, “I had an amazing time. I woke up yesterday morning with the craziest toothache, and had to go to the dentist. I had an unexpected root canal yesterday.”

The stress of a demanding media schedule supporting her Best Actress Oscar nomination may have manifested with a toothache. “That’s how it showed up,” she said, “because I actually feel really good. But my body is going: ‘We’ll just transfer, however you might need it, we’ll just put it right there.'”

On Oscar nominations morning, Erivo was on a plane to Salt Lake City, Utah, heading to the Sundance Film Festival to accept the Visionary Award at their gala fundraiser. “I was in my seat, crying my eyes out so much that the flight attendant gave me a box of tissues,” she said. “Not just a tissue, but a box of tissues.”

If Erivo were to win her first Oscar, she’d win an EGOT, having already earned an Emmy, Grammy, and Tony (for various manifestations of “The Color Purple”). 

Here’s what Erivo did to make Elphaba her own.

For one thing, better than anyone, she knows the difference between stage and screen. (Did she want to play Celie in the movie version of “The Color Purple”? Yes. “I loved playing the role. If the role had come my way, I would have done it proudly, but it went to whom it was meant to go to.”)

“We have the luxury of having a camera that can be right here,” she said, holding her hands to her face. “I can give you all the micro expressions that you might not be able to read from seat number 70-something at the back of the theater, but now you can be right with me in my face, and you can read the slightest smile or the look to the side that you wouldn’t be able to read from from the stage. It’s hard to find that balance of being able to give more, but quietly, as truthfully as possible.”

Mostly, Erivo started her prep for “Wicked” by recognizing that Elphaba was accustomed to being green. “I wanted her to be more human,” she said. “Because with a character like that, you can fall into the trappings of letting the green do the work for you. But actually, she’s been in the skin for a long time. Each woman has played her right for themselves, but we often forget, that’s not the first time she’s been green. She’s been green for at least 20 years before that moment you meet her. This is something that she’s experienced constantly over years. When we get into a habit of receiving something, we get to the thing before the other person gets there. What is the approach that says, ‘I’ve been in the skin for a long time and you’re catching up? I know about this already. So yes, I’m green. No, I’m not seasick.’ It isn’t that there’s less anger in it, but more boredom, and it gives her room to be more funny, to have more light in her.”

Erivo toned down the anger, even though Elphaba is badly treated by her father because of being “different.” “Where you meet her, she isn’t already angry and she isn’t already snippy and she isn’t going for the jugular with everybody,” she said. “It isn’t as forceful as you are used to [onstage]. When we get to the end, then we can start to veer off into the darkness a bit more, because you earn it. We start with: she is hopeful, and she can and she does believe that her dreams might come true. And she does want to run around and run up the hill like Julie Andrews and sing with her arms wide open, and just be joyful, and that is still in her.”

And Erivo recognized that as a Black actress, this experience was going to be different. She’s thrilled that the first Black Elphaba on Broadway was announced recently. “I want to be there for her first performance,” she said. “It’s been wonderful hearing from other Black women who have received it that way as well. Because it is an allegory for otherness, but you can’t hide the fact that her skin is green, and next to everybody else, no one else’s skin is green, and that she’s often maligned because of her skin color. That has to come into the conversation. As a person who knows what it’s like where spaces don’t necessarily open up for you because of your skin color because you’re a Black woman, you can’t behave like that’s not included in this cauldron of storytelling. It has to be there. And it’s a lived experience that I can infuse Elphaba with.”

She added, “I feel lucky to have the conversation about the types of otherness that we experience as a human race, but also this specific type of otherness that people are afraid to talk about. You can’t overcome something if you don’t have the conversation. The more we can talk about it, the more we see that we have some work to do, and the more we work on it, the better it is for everyone.”

‘Wicked’Giles Keyte /Universal Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

The pivotal scene in “Wicked” is the elaborately choreographed Ozdust Ballroom sequence and the song “Dancing Through Life.” When Elphaba walks into the party displaying her off-kilter, angular black hat for the first time, “she does believe that she’s been accepted,” said Erivo. “‘I’ve been invited to this party, and people are starting to see me a bit more.’ And when that rug is pulled out from under her, that becomes more heartbreaking because the hope was there in the first place. If there’s no hope, you don’t get the payoff of the heartbreak. I wanted to make sure that the heartbreak that we feel is real. You have to follow her and you know this is not going to work out for her, but she has to believe that it might be good. And so when it isn’t, it should get you in the chest. It should be horrible to watch.”

Grueling to shoot, the scene traces the arc of the relationship between Elphaba and Galinda, as Elphaba does an agonizingly awkward solo dance until Galinda reluctantly decides to join her and save her. “It was about 10 to 12 minutes, and we shot it in one [take],” said Erivo. “So we shot it from me coming down the stairs, and then I do the solo dance on its own, and then Galinda comes in, and we do the duet. And we shot that as a whole each time. And so you are having to rewind the feelings that you’re having, then regurgitate them again. I thought perhaps it would get easier as the day went on. And it didn’t actually, it progressively got harder and harder. Because in order to get to those places, the line completely disappears. And you’re at the bone, you’re feeling all of those things deeply. You feel them deeply in the first take. But by the tenth it just you, you are receiving the rejection, you’re receiving the shame, you’re receiving the isolation, and whilst also using things that you have experienced to actually be in there. It was a lot, yeah.”

‘Wicked’Giles Keyte

Erivo went back to being abandoned by her father at age 16. She and her sister stood on a train station platform as he told them he never wanted to see them again. “I cannot tell you to this day, why,” she said. “He was just done. Some people are cultivated with that skill to be a parent, to be a person that is able to take care of another person. My mum was born with that. So I lucked out in that I got that parent as a mother. My dad, I don’t think was that. Something went off in my brain when that happened that saw me through a lot of my life. Now I have to undo some of those reasons for getting to where I am, and shift the reason for why I no longer want to prove to him that I’m worthy of being loved. I’m glad that I used that as fire. But now I love what I do because it makes me feel happy. My job brings me joy.”

Shooting the Ozdust Ballroom scene was so intense that Erivo broke down in tears. “All of those feelings were real,” she said. “I knew what it was like to feel rejected. I knew what it was like to feel like nobody wanted you in a space. I know what that feeling is, unfortunately, to go into a space and know that nobody wants you there. I allowed those feelings to come through, and I took the rejection from my father as well and pulled that into that space. Because I didn’t believe that I could do that scene without using all of the experiences of rejection and hurt and pain and make it real.”

Luckily, Elphaba is saved when Galinda comes through for her. When Elphaba finishes her dance, said Erivo, “Galinda is faced with the challenge. Elphaba lays out a question directly to Galinda, wordless: ‘What do you do now?’ Galinda is faced with the choice: ‘I can stay where I am, keep the notoriety, not step into the thing that I’m desperately afraid of, which is embarrassing myself, and losing the popularity that I have, and losing the power.’ Because popularity is a form of power. To be popular, to be the one that everybody wants to be with, that everyone wants to look at, to be the one that everyone sees, is a form of power, but that power can sometimes be crippling, which which is why it ends up leading people into doing terrible things to keep their popularity. She has the choice to possibly lose it or hold on to it by making another person feel horrid. And she chooses to risk it and actually dive into what might be a true friendship with a person who doesn’t actually care about her popularity at all and is asking her to be a human being.”

‘Wicked’©Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection

Five years ago, Erivo launched a production company, Edith’s Daughter, named for her mother, which has a slate of projects in development. “We have a series with Apple that is close,” she said, “that I’m co- producing with Renée Zellweger. And we took a deal which is quite new with Universal. Now we’ll get to expand on what we can do.”

She’s trying to make the one-woman play “Prima Facie” into a movie. “You have to shift it now because we’re on screen,” she said. “But it’s been a process, not easy, because you need the funding.” Two other movies, “Blink Speed,” and “Carrier,” have yet to fit into her production schedule. “I definitely want to be a production company that works,” she said. “I don’t want everything to be in development all the time. I do want things to go to the screen!”

For now, she’s doing equestrian training for an upcoming movie with Gina Prince-Bythewood, “Children of Blood and Bone.” She learned to ride a horse for “Harriet,” which garnered Erivo’s first Oscar nomination for playing Harriet Tubman, but she feels she needs more practice.

Next up: “Wicked: For Good,” coming November 21, 2025, promises to take Elphaba and Glinda to darker places. “I love the turn it takes,” said Erivo. “I love the way it gets there, because it’s not there immediately, but you can see where it can come from. Yeah, it’s coming!”