Cynthia Erivo on fame, fear and not fitting in: ‘I’ve never talked about how tough my journey has been’
She is one of the world’s most acclaimed performers – going stratospheric as Elphaba in the hit film adaptation of Wicked. Now she’s up for a best actress Oscar. What next for Britain’s brightest star?
I thought I knew everything about Wicked when Cynthia Erivo walked into a meeting room in the Guardian’s London offices. She felt wildly incongruous, way too perfect and vivid for the neutral surrounds, like seeing a princess on an escalator, but I suspect she comes off like that in a lot of rooms.
Last week, Erivo received an Oscar nomination for best actress for Wicked, one of 10 nominations for the film. Released last November, within one month it had become the highest-grossing movie adaptation of a stage musical in history. Critics had been tipping it to do a double with Gladiator II, in the style of Barbenheimer the year before, with audiences seeing both in a double bill. In the event, it blew Ridley Scott’s film out of the water. Importantly, it is also astronomically magnetic to teenage girls (I have those at home), and do they ever talk.
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