Los Angeles — Cynthia Erivo Pushes Back Against Criticism of Her Friendship With Ariana Grande
Cynthia Erivo is speaking out about the public attention surrounding her friendship with Ariana Grande, her co-star in Wicked, and the film’s sequel.
The theatre star and singer has reached new levels of fame following Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of Wicked, in which Erivo plays Elphaba, the Wicked Witch, opposite Grande as Glinda the Good. Several moments from the press tour for the 2024 film went viral, drawing attention to the stars’ close bond and prompting questions about their relationship.
During an interview with The Guardian for her upcoming courtroom drama Prima Facie, Erivo said some people appeared to analyze the friendship as though they were psychologists.
“It was interesting that there were many people who had become psychologists from their couches,” Erivo said. “There was this weird sort of, what’s the word I’m looking for … annoyance … at the fact that two women could actually be friends. Like, why are they friends? Why are they connected? There must be something wrong with them.”
Among the moments that circulated widely online were the co-stars embracing, crying and, in perhaps the most widely discussed instance, “holding space” while pinching each other’s pointer fingers.
Erivo questioned why their emotional displays had attracted such criticism.
“Why are they showing emotion? How dare they cry? And how dare they laugh? And how dare they be emotive and alive?” she asked.
She described the public reaction as a double-edged sword, suggesting the pair would have faced criticism regardless of how they behaved.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” she added. “Because if we were dead behind the eyes and showing no emotion, there would have been something else to say about it. I wish there was someone who could have been like, ‘Right, this is the proper balance of emotion that you should show. Don’t show this. Don’t show that. Just this amount.’”
Another significant moment occurred during a red-carpet event in Singapore, when a man grabbed Grande and Erivo immediately intervened. Erivo recalled the incident as terrifying, saying her immediate thought was simply “‘Get this man away from us now.’”
The incident led people online to characterize Erivo as Grande’s “bodyguard,” a label that made her uncomfortable. She said the response reflected misogyny and misogynoir.
“I was like: ‘Oh, you think because I look like this that you could talk to me this way about something that was a human thing that I would have done for any friend, and hopefully a friend would have done for me,’” she said. “But I must be a bodyguard.”
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