\n<\/p>\n
Elphaba might have been reluctant to go to Shiv University, but Cynthia Erivo still wants to get a Ph.D.<\/p>\n
Specifically, the star who plays Elphaba in \u201cWicked<\/a>\u201d onscreen is interested in how everyday experiences affect people\u2019s voices, not just when they are speaking but when they are singing, too. Erivo was keen to study this after being accepted as a fellow into Harvard\u2019s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2021, but she had to decline the fellowship because of a busy schedule that never slowed down.<\/p>\n Though filming for \u201cWicked\u201d is over, she just finished a huge press tour for Part 1, she\u2019s in the thick of an awards season campaign (which this week included a SAG Award nomination<\/a>), and she faces the prospect of another big media blitz when Part 2 opens later this year. She\u2019s also starring in, producing and adapting a film version of the Tony-winning Broadway drama \u201cPrima Facie.\u201d<\/p>\n But it was her work as a teacher at her alma mater, the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, that was still on her mind. \u201cEvery time I can tell,\u201d she said in a recent interview, \u201cwhen someone has been told that they are too much, they should be quieter, or they shouldn\u2019t talk so loud, it transfers over to how they use their voices when they sing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n She explained that when students get to a belting note, they seem to back off. \u201cThe notes are there. The sound is there,\u201d she finds, but then \u201cthey put it in a song. It disappears.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Meeting up in late November, a mere week after \u201cWicked\u201d opened to a strong $114 million domestically<\/a>, Erivo was surprisingly as eager to share her theories of vocal psychology as she seemed at ease with her sudden global superstardom.<\/p>\n Even without Elphaba\u2019s green makeup, micro-braids and black dress, Erivo was instantly recognized by the patrons at Sardi\u2019s in Manhattan\u2019s Theater District, where we spoke. Wearing a two-toned Rejina Pyo skirt and an olive Sies Marjan feather sweater, she was also sporting her signature glam: long bejeweled nails, dazzling nose and ear piercings, and a closely shaved haircut. Downstairs, her caricature hung on the restaurant\u2019s celebrity wall, an honor she received after winning the 2016 Tony Award for her performance as Celie in the Broadway revival of \u201cThe Color Purple.\u201d (She also has an Emmy and a Grammy for performances related to the role.)<\/p>\n What links \u201cThe Color Purple,\u201d \u201cWicked\u201d and other key career moments has been her ability to move seamlessly between the characters\u2019 reserved personalities and their impassioned expressions of their inner lives. Sitting with Erivo allowed me to appreciate the qualities she shares with them: a keen intellect and inquisitiveness. These traits are most present in the screen performances she may be best known for: the bookish Elphaba, the prodigious Aretha Franklin in the 2017 mini-series \u201cGenius: Aretha<\/a>,\u201d and the prophetic Harriet Tubman in the 2019 biopic<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI don\u2019t pick the characters frivolously,\u201d she said. Their intelligence, though manifested in different ways, allows her to get into their psyches \u201cso that hopefully a watcher can leave, think that they\u2019ve forgotten, but a day or so later they are still thinking about that character and what the character has been through.\u201d<\/p>\n With confidence, Erivo explained that she didn\u2019t want the characters to disappear but \u201cto stay with you and maybe help you address some things, remember some things, change some things.\u201d She conceded that she might be asking a lot of the characters, but to her, \u201cthat\u2019s kind of the thrill of it, hoping that that might be a possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That also describes her effect on the \u201cWicked\u201d creative team after her audition. The film\u2019s director, Jon M. Chu, who had first seen her on Broadway, wasn\u2019t sure whether Erivo, who was 35 at the time, would be open to a character that young and innocent again, especially amid, as he put it, \u201cthe different vibe\u201d of Oz.<\/p>\n \u201cShe completely transformed my opinion of what she\u2019s capable of doing because she came in jeans and a T-shirt,\u201d Chu recalled. \u201cShe looked like a little girl, and the way she sang \u2018Wizard and I\u2019 wasn\u2019t like the untouchable Cynthia Erivo.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe just completely made me believe in Elphaba\u2019s yearning for a better place and optimism at the movie\u2019s beginning,\u201d he continued, emphatically concluding, \u201cWe were waiting for someone to come into the room and take the role from us instead of us coming up with excuses of why we should cast someone. We just wanted to see a person be it, and that\u2019s what she did.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Awards voters have been won over to an extent as well. Erivo was nominated for a Golden Globe, though she lost out to Demi Moore. Now she\u2019s up for a SAG Award and is considered a strong contender when the Oscar nominations are announced on Jan. 19. At the Golden Globes and in other appearances, her impact on popular culture continues to resonate, too. Her \u201cholding space\u201d interview<\/a> with her \u201cWicked\u201d co-star Ariana Grande immediately went viral, and inspired countless memes.<\/p>\n Erivo has spent her career pushing past others\u2019 expectations: first by landing the role of Celie, in the 2013 revival of \u201cThe Color Purple\u201d in London, then bringing the house down for almost two years after the show moved to New York in 2015. Four years later came backlash when the British-born and raised Erivo, who is of Nigerian descent, was cast to play Tubman, the celebrated Black abolitionist who escaped from slavery in the American South. But Erivo received Oscar nominations for both best actress and best song.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Though she wore extensive green makeup and prosthetic ears in \u201cWicked,\u201d Erivo\u2019s shapeshifting rarely involves a radical physical transformation. Standing 5-foot-1, she tends to come across as larger than life because of the icons she plays, her meticulous research process and her intense prep long before filming.<\/p>\n Kasi Lemmons, the director of \u201cHarriet,\u201d said she was blown away by Erivo\u2019s ability to infuse even minor details into scenes that were complex and harrowing to shoot. \u201cThe first thing we did was have Harriet lead the freedom seekers across a big field. And when Cynthia came on, she was Harriet, but then she ran,\u201d Lemmons said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t the athletic run that I had seen her do in a movie like \u2018Widows<\/a>.\u2019 There was something feminine and ordinary in her run, even in how she held her dress. It was a beautiful swiftness. She brought a softness to Harriet that I thought was essential, but I didn\u2019t know how essential it was until it unfolded in front of me.\u201d<\/p>\n Erivo has a similarly mesmerizing moment in \u201cWicked\u201d during \u201cThe Wizard and I,\u201d a showstopper revealing Elphaba\u2019s ambitions, loneliness and self-consciousness. But, for a brief second, it does even more: When Elphaba looks in the mirror and sees her skin change from green to brown and back to green again, the film recognizes the power of casting Erivo as the rare Black actress in this beloved role.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Visiting the \u201cWicked\u201d set last year, Leslie Odom Jr., who starred with Erivo in \u201cHarriet\u201d and the John Ridley romance \u201cNeedle in a Timestack\u201d (2021), saw them shoot that scene. \u201cIt was just the joy of watching someone who has obtained mastery over a handful of the disciplines. When it\u2019s done at that skill level, I find it very moving,\u201d he told me. \u201cBut, I also saw a tenderness and an acceptance of herself, which means the work is not tortured. I felt as though I was witnessing someone allow themselves to be enough.\u201d<\/p>\n And while Erivo\u2019s \u201cDefying Gravity\u201d finale in \u201cWicked\u201d is an unforgettable combination of virtuosity, vulnerability and charisma that it is now impossible for me, an avid \u201cWicked\u201d theatergoer, to hear any other way again, Chu pointed out that \u201cshe\u2019s never stopped doing the work to master a scene.\u201d He added, \u201cThat takes resilience, dedication and a promise to that character to see her through. By watching her, we all had to commit to that level, and it raised the bar for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n