Cynthia Erivo Says She Wants to See Wicked One More Time Before Making the Movie

At the 64th annual Grammy Awards Sunday, Cynthia Erivo was nominated for her performance of “Stand Up,” from the 2019 film “Harriet.” But it won’t be long before she’s flying, when she begins filming Jon M. Chu’s film adaptation of the hit musical “Wicked,” in which she’ll star as the green witch Elphaba. During an interview with Variety On the Carpet presented by DIRECTV, she spoke about where she is in the process of preparing for her gravity-defying role.

“I’m relearning everything,” Erivo told Variety senior entertainment writer Angelique Jackson. “I want to go and see it again. … When I get to New York at some point I’ll pop in and see the show again, that’ll be my fifth time.”

Erivo is starring in the film alongside fellow Grammy winner Ariana Grande, who’ll play the bubbly good witch Glinda. While the film hasn’t started shooting yet, Erivo said the team is currently having conversations about what they want the film to be like.

“We’re sort of at the beginning, we’re all having conversations about what we want, what we want to do, like the style of it,” Erivo said. “I spoke to Paul Tazewell, who’s our costume designer and just recently Oscar-nominated, and Jon [Chu] who is our director, who’s incredible, and we’re all sort of talking about how we want it to feel.”

When asked what she’d imagine her costume to look like, Erivo mentioned a Jean Paul Gaultier collection with a “new world, kind of gilded age” feeling.

Erivo was on hand Sunday to take part in a tribute to another musical theater phenomenon, the late composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who died last November. Erivo also recalled the first time she performed his music, in anticipation of her rendition of “Send in the Clowns” from “A Little Night Music.

“The first time I sang any Sondheim I think it was just right at the beginning of drama school, and I had known about Sondheim before that, and I just love the way in which he tells story, the way he can express a feeling, and how complex he can make the music and can tell you about the human experience,” Erivo said. “He was a wonderful, wonderful composer, writer, lyricist, all of those things.”

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