‘Wicked’ actress Cynthia Erivo identified with her character Elphaba because she also feels like an “outsider”.
Cynthia Erivo has learned to use being an “outsider” as her “power”.
The 37 -year-old actress portrays Elphaba in new musical ‘Wicked’ and she can see a lot of parallels between herself and her alter ego, not just in their backgrounds but how they have responded to adversity.
She recently told Britain’s OK! magazine: “I think what I discovered – and I guess it surprised me – is there are so many connective tissues between myself and Elphaba and the lives we live.
“Her relationship with her father is fractured and different and difficult, as is mine.
“She is the older sister, as am I.
“But also, in the grand scheme of things, knowing what it feels like to be an outsider, knowing what it feels like to be different; to be the one on the outside, to be a Black queer woman playing this green woman has its parallels.
“I know what it is to not necessarily feel like the world is necessarily made for you or makes space for you – and having to reckon with that, but also find ways of accepting it for yourself, accepting who you are fully and using that as your power.”
Cynthia, like her co-star Ariana Grande, sang live during filming for ‘Wicked’, and she admitted it was very “demanding” on her body.
She explained: “The songs really demanded a lot of my body to be physical.
“And because I was in the air doing most of these songs, except for ‘I’m Not That Girl’, I was in a wire and a harness for most of the songs at some point.
“And obviously, by ‘Defying Gravity’, I was in the wires the whole time.
“In that sense, I had to make sure my body was prepared to sing in the air, which essentially means there’s no ground beneath me.
“I’m in a harness, there’s a corset on me and I’m flipping over, so I have to figure out how to place it and where to put the air and how to breathe and how to make the notes as powerful as I needed to when I have nothing to push off.”
Cynthia Erivo embraces ‘power’ of being an outsider
