“We were really trying to take care of each other,” she said
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/Ariana-Grande-Cynthia-Erivo-WICKED-110724-tout-6f874620c551449487c437199575b3ec.jpg "Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo attend the")
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NEED TO KNOW
- Cynthia Erivo revealed that she and Ariana Grande were “holding on by threads” after spending nearly four years filming and promoting the Wicked movies
- “It’s very interesting, watching what people’s perception is versus what the reality actually is,” she said
- The Tony Award-winning actress also opened up about “being made fun of” after she protected her costar from a fan at the Singapore premiere of Wicked: For Good
Cynthia Erivo admits that she and Ariana Grande were “holding on by threads” toward the end of their Wicked press tours.
While discussing the past four years she's spent filming and promoting the double-feature adaptation of the iconic Broadway musical, the Tony Award-winning actress, 39, told Variety in an interview published May 27, that she and Grande, 32, were just “really trying to take care of each other” at the end of it all.
Since the first leg of their press tour was characterized by their fascinating friendship and tearful interviews, Erivo recalled watching as fans at home seemingly decided “who we were, what we were going through, what we were doing and why.”
“It's very interesting, watching what people's perception is versus what the reality actually is,” Erivo explained. “I think that people didn't really believe that we were actually friends. But that's also because people don't know me very well. If I'm a friend, then I'm a friend. If I'm not, then I'm not.”
Credit: Universal Pictures
Emphasizing that she and Grande still text nearly every day, Erivo said that the “nature of the work” she does requires her to “truly embody and be different people,” which she felt many people took at face value.
As she put it, “I think sometimes, if I'm honest, people thought I was being myself, even though I was green."
In addition to intense criticism they both faced during the Wicked press tours, Erivo recalled the especially terrifying incident that occurred during the Singapore premiere of Wicked: For Good, in which she protected Grande from a man who jumped over the barrier to grab her.
“Nobody moved. Nobody moved,” Erivo recalled. “My immediate reaction was ‘Get him away from us.' And 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 him off.”
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“A stranger is a stranger,” she continued. “Personal space is still personal space. It doesn't belong to anyone, even if you feel you know the person. In that moment, we were all terrified.”
Once the moment went viral on social media, however, Erivo began to notice that some of the chatter and memes surrounding the incident pointed to “the insidious nature of how we view Black women.”
“I'm sure people will read this and think, ‘Oh, for goodness' sake, it's not about that.' But it is,” she explained. “Because 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 about what I looked like.”
“Because of that, there was this assumption that I was bigger than my co-star and so I had to be controlling or protecting, and that was my role,” she added. “I would hazard a guess that it would not have been the same had it been the other way around.”