Cynthia Erivo sits in a Century City recording studio on a recent afternoon, mulling over her choice of footwear the other night.
The British singer and actor — whose overlapping work in music, film, television and theater have put her an Oscar win away from EGOT status — has just returned to her adopted home of L.A. from Houston, where she performed with that city’s symphony orchestra in a gig that featured her interpretations of songs by or associated with the likes of Nina Simone, Etta James, Tina Turner and Ann Peebles.
“It’s one of my favorite things to do,” she says of the concert, a version of which she’s booked to bring to cities across the country this year. “I do my own makeup and I do my own styling — just bring along whatever I bring along.”
Erivo, 38, is widely regarded as one of musical theater’s premier showstoppers thanks in large part to her role as the green-skinned Elphaba in the blockbuster big-screen adaptation of “Wicked,” Part 1 of which climaxed with her earth-shaking rendition of “Defying Gravity.” (Part 2 of the film, which co-stars Ariana Grande as Glinda and imagines the two witches before the events of “The Wizard of Oz,” is due in November.) On Sunday night in New York, Erivo will host the 78th Tony Awards, nine years after she won the prize for leading actress in a musical for her Broadway debut as Celie in “The Color Purple.”
Yet for shows like the one in Houston, Erivo is aiming for something looser, more spontaneous, slightly lower-key.
“The concert before that one, I’d taken off my shoes partway through,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘I’m sorry — I’m taking them off.’ Then I thought: What if I just started without?” She laughs. “Sometimes you want the look and you want the heels, and it feels good. I’m good at being in heels. But other times you just want to feel connected.”
It’s a spirit that carries over to Erivo’s new solo album, “I Forgive You,” which comes out Friday. Softer and more intimate than the roof-raising she’s known for, the LP ponders the personal drama of romance and sex — from flirtation to commitment to betrayal and back — in songs that set aside musical spectacle for emotional realism.
Says Erivo: “You can only do so many 11 o’clock numbers, you know what I mean?”
With its sensual grooves and breathy vocals, “I Forgive You” also represents a return to Erivo’s roots in the soul music she loved “before I met the musical theater version of myself,” as she puts it. Among her faves: Marvin Gaye, Musiq Soulchild, Roberta Flack and Brandy, whose 1998 album “Never Say Never” — released when Erivo was 11 — she singles out for its sophisticated ideas about harmony.
Erivo is a devoted student of R&B history and an eloquent assayer of what distinguishes the classics; she can talk in depth about the precision of Flack’s arrangements and about the peculiar changes in “Day Dreaming” by Aretha Franklin (whom she portrayed in Season 3 of National Geographic’s “Genius” series). Her knowledge and talent have made her something of a fixture at the Kennedy Center Honors, where she’s paid loving tribute to the likes of Dionne Warwick and Earth, Wind & Fire.
Yet she’s no mere revivalist: As a musical thinker, she’s always searching for ways to individualize the hallmarks of a tradition; as a queer Black woman, she’s always raising questions about whom any tradition is meant to welcome.
“There’s something very special about Cynthia,” says the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s music director, Gustavo Dudamel, who calls Erivo “a unique presence — not just a voice, but a storyteller who is deeply connected to every note.” In April, Dudamel invited Erivo to join the L.A. Phil at Coachella, where she performed a churchy rendition of Prince’s “Purple Rain.”
“She brings this incredible authenticity, generosity and intensity to everything she does, as if she is living inside the music,” Dudamel adds.
That flair was on display earlier at February’s Grammy Awards, where Erivo sang “Fly Me to the Moon” with Herbie Hancock accompanying her on piano as part of a tribute to the late Quincy Jones (who arranged Frank Sinatra’s definitive 1964 recording of the jazz standard).
“They asked if I could do it, and I was like, ‘I can, but I’m not Frank,’” she recalls, curled on a sofa in the studio’s control room. She’s wearing a long, drapey skirt with high slits that reveal her tattooed legs, and her signature nails click against one another as she gestures with her hands. “Frank did ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ how it was supposed to be done for him, so I had to find out how to do it for me. I told them, ‘Is there a way we can find space for rubato, pianissimo, glissando — all of that — so we can really play in the music?’
“It took a little convincing, but they let me have it,” she says. The result was a stunning yet subtle deconstruction of the song — an exquisite little two-hander that felt like a conversation between Erivo and Hancock.
“When I went out into the audience afterward, I bumped into Beyoncé,” Erivo says, grinning at the memory. “She was like, ‘You’re an alien, and I love it.’”
The daughter of Nigerian immigrants, Erivo grew up in London and studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After graduating in 2010, she performed in various theatrical productions around the U.K.; her big break came in 2013 when she was cast in the “Color Purple” revival in London that eventually transferred to Broadway. In 2019, she was nominated for actress in a leading role at the Academy Awards for her performance in the title role of Kasi Lemmons’ Harriet Tubman biopic; a second actress nod came for her turn as Elphaba in “Wicked.”
Erivo recorded much of her new album in this very studio while on breaks from shooting “Wicked.” She’d sit in here with her producer, Will Wells, and build what she calls a “vocal pad” from 20 or 30 overdubbed Cynthias — Enya was a key inspiration, she says — then write a melody and a lyric based on the vibe of what they’d laid down.
“Maybe there’s a part of me that’s a bit of a psycho,” she says of taking up a second project amid the pressing demands of a first. “But I feel like doing ‘Wicked’ opened up my creative juices. Once you’re doing something creative, everything else is sort of fed by it.”
Indeed, with “I Forgive You” and the Tonys on the way, Erivo has also been preparing for another upcoming gig: In August, she’ll play Jesus Christ — “That’s a funny sentence,” she says with a laugh — in a production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” at the Hollywood Bowl that will co-star Adam Lambert as Judas Iscariot.
“I was like, ‘Well, this could be a challenge — a new way to use my voice,’” she says of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s early-’70s rock opera about the final days of Jesus’ life. “I have no intention of changing any ‘he’s’ to ‘she’s’ or anything like that. It’s about telling the story as truthfully as I possibly can. But the music often feels like it’s not necessarily …” She trails off, searching for the right words to describe Lloyd Webber’s oeuvre, which also includes the mega-musicals “Cats,” “Evita” and “The Phantom of the Opera.”
“I’ll say it: It doesn’t necessarily belong to Black people,” she says. “But I think that’s because of how a lot of it has been performed. If you really listen to some of it …” Erivo sings a few lines from “Memory,” the old “Cats” warhorse, bending notes and inserting little vocal flourishes here and there. “This might be a reach, but that sounds a bit like Toni Braxton,” she says. “It’s about who is singing it and what they hear in the music.”
Erivo will play Jesus Christ in a production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” at the Hollywood Bowl in August.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Lambert, the one-time “American Idol” runner-up who’s gone on to a varied career in music, theater and television, points out that when “Jesus Christ Superstar” premiered, its rock sound was controversial in the context of a religious story.
“It pissed people off,” he says. “In 2025, rock music is not going to challenge anyone anymore — it’s no longer considered transgressive in any way. But the idea that you’re challenging people’s idea of this icon by casting someone like Cynthia — I think that’s brilliant.”
Erivo has similar thoughts about her physical appearance, which has grown more distinctive — and perhaps more provocative — as she’s gotten more famous. Asked to name the musicians she thinks of as her style icons, she mentions Skin, the frontwoman of the English rock group Skunk Anansie.
“She carved out her own space and just occupied it,” she says of Skin, a Black woman who appeared on the cover of Skunk Anansie’s 1995 debut wearing camo pants and a shaved head. “It’s in your face, how she looks, and I think the confrontation of it is probably what I’m drawn to.” Though Erivo says she’s felt embraced by Black women in Hollywood, “a lot of straight white men don’t know what to do with a Black girl who’s bald and has all these piercings.” She laughs.
“But this isn’t for the male gaze,” she says. “I don’t think it’s for anyone’s gaze. It’s for me — that’s where I start.”
Erivo, who’s in a very private romantic relationship with the filmmaker Lena Waithe, became an almost inescapable pop-cultural presence during the epic press tour for “Wicked,” which with estimated worldwide box office sales of more than $750 million is now the highest-grossing adaptation of a musical in movie history.
As she readies herself to promote the second film, is she feeling pre-exhausted by the interviews and the red carpets and the glad-handing to come?
“I’m not pre-exhausted because I have no idea what we’re going to do this time,” she says. “I’m tentatively excited about what we might do, what we might bring, what it will feel like. It has to feel different because this movie is very different to the first.”
Looking back at the viral “holding space” meme spawned from a chat Erivo and Grande had with a journalist from Out magazine, Erivo says she understands why it became such a phenomenon: “It’s brilliant because we’re in three different places — we’re all having our own experience simultaneously.”
Yet for the most part, she and Grande “were sort of surprised by how fascinated people were with us as a pair,” she says. “We were just doing what we had been doing whilst we were making the film. I mean, we’d spent a long time together. When you spend that much time with a person, you’re either going to grow to love them or grow to hate them. And we just happened to grow to love each other.”
Grande’s opinion was one of the first Erivo sought as she assembled “I Forgive You”; the pop star, Erivo says, “is one of the most intelligent producers and songwriters that exists. She has amazing ears.” Has Erivo ever thought about which Glinda song she might like to sing if she and Grande swapped “Wicked” roles? She considers the question in silence for a good 10 seconds.
“There’s a new song that she has [in Part 2], which I would love to try,” she says. “But I’m not going to say what it is because I don’t want to get in trouble.” She’d also relish the chance to perform the show’s opening number, “No One Mourns the Wicked.” “But I so love what her voice does on it — how open her coloratura is — that I’ll leave that for her,” she adds.
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande at January’s 82nd Golden Globe Awards.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
That’s likely how many fans feel about Erivo’s take on “Defying Gravity,” which has been streamed more than 145 million times on Spotify and even charted on Billboard’s Pop Airplay tally — a rarity these days for a tune from Broadway. Is Erivo tired of the song?
“I don’t think I am, because of what it means to people,” she says. Asked what her favorite part of the song is, she says she has three, each of which she sings to demonstrate.
“Right at the beginning: ‘Something has changed within me / Something is not the same / I’m through with playing by the rules of someone else’s game.’ I love the weird interval there. So I love that, and I love ‘Unlimited / Together, we’re unlimited’ — just that note progression.
“Then there’s a particular part of the end. Yes, the war cry is delightful to sing,” she says, referring to the heroic vocal lick that brings down the curtain on Part 1 of the movie. “But there’s a bit that comes before that — ‘And nobody in all of Oz / No wizard that there is or was / Is ever going to bring me down’ — that’s like a burgeoning of something before you get up there. You have to earn it.”
Given her deep attachment to the song, anyone watching March’s Oscars ceremony — where Erivo and Grande performed a medley of songs from “Wicked,” “The Wiz” and “The Wizard of Oz” — had to be amused by the glimpse of a prompter showing Erivo the lyrics to “Defying Gravity,” as though she might need them.
“You can see I’m not looking at it at all,” she says with a laugh. “It’s definitely one of those things that’s ingrained in my brain forever.” Even so, “Defying Gravity” doesn’t currently have a place in Erivo’s concert set; nor does “I’m Here,” her showstopper from “The Color Purple.” “I’m sure they will at some point,” she says of the songs, both of which tend to take up all the available oxygen in a room. “Give me 20 years.”
Speaking of which: Whose career does Erivo view as a model as she continues to move between singing and acting? “Probably Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross — those are really the two women who were able to navigate making albums and being on-screen,” she says. “With Barbra, she’s navigated the stage as well. I don’t know if there’s anyone else who’s been able to do that as fully. The amount of music she has is insane. Her first album came out in — what — ’62, ’63? And that was before ‘Funny Girl’?” Erivo shakes her head in admiration.
“That reminds me,” she says. “I’m going to put ‘People’ in my set.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
