Erivo's instinct to protect Grande from a stranger was dismissed as an 'overreaction' and portrayed as her being a 'bodyguard'.
Erivo felt her humanity was 'bastardized' due to assumptions made about her appearance as a bald, Black woman.
Erivo was discouraged from campaigning for an Oscar, feeling her actions were misinterpreted due to racial biases.
Cynthia Erivo is opening up about how discouraging it was to be compared to a bodyguard when protecting her friend and costar, Ariana Grande, likening the comparison to “the insidious nature of how we view Black women.”
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Both Wicked press tours resulted in a myriad of viral moments, but one incident created memes that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
During the Singapore premiere of the film, a man jumped over a barrier to grab Grande. This situation would be upsetting no matter who the celebrity, but for Grande, it was especially so, given her diagnosis with PTSD after a suicide bomber killed 22 people at her 2017 concert.
As the man inched closer, nobody protected the singer and actress, which is when Erivo jumped into action.
“Nobody moved. Nobody moved,” Erivo recalls during an interview with Variety. “So I moved because my brain went, ‘Get him away! Get him out of here!’ 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.”
Having witnessed their close connection throughout the press tour, many viewers weren’t surprised to see Erivo put her life on the line to save a friend. But some dismissed the situation as an overreaction.
“A stranger is a stranger. Personal space is still personal space,” she explained. “It doesn’t belong to anyone, even if you feel you know the person,” she says. “In that moment, we were all terrified.”
As many viewers praised the actress’ fast reflexes, the instance also prompted memes, portraying Erivo as Grande’s “bodyguard.” That portrayal, in particular, did not sit well with the Tony Award winner.
“I think that we haven’t really come to terms with the insidious nature of how we view Black women. And I’m sure people will read this and think, ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, it’s not about that.’ But it is,” Erivo explains. “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. And 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. I would hazard a guess that it would not have been the same had it been the other way around.”
Variety also questioned if the reverberations from Singapore put her off campaigning for an Oscar, which Erivo agreed to.
“I think maybe in a way it did, actually,” she says. “I just felt like my humanity had been bastardized. I felt like something I did instinctively had been made to be something that it simply was not because of the way people see women who look like me, and because of the assumptions that are made, and I just didn’t want to be a part of that, really and truly. I didn’t want to put myself through it. I didn’t feel like I deserved it.” It didn’t help, she adds, that “it felt like there was already a sort of upturned nose at the second installment, even though we all knew there was a second film coming and we were just doing our jobs.”
