Cynthia Erivo sits in a Century Metropolis recording studio on a latest afternoon, mulling over her alternative of footwear the opposite night time.
The British singer and actor — whose overlapping work in music, movie, tv and theater have put her an Oscar win away from EGOT standing — has simply returned to her adopted house of L.A. from Houston, the place she carried out with that metropolis’s symphony orchestra in a gig that featured her interpretations of songs by or related to 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 live performance, a model of which she’s booked to deliver to cities throughout the nation this yr. “I do my own makeup and I do my own styling — just bring along whatever I bring along.”
Erivo, 38, is broadly considered one in every of musical theater’s premier showstoppers thanks largely to her function because the green-skinned Elphaba within the blockbuster big-screen adaptation of “Wicked,” Half 1 of which climaxed along with her earth-shaking rendition of “Defying Gravity.” (Half 2 of the movie, which co-stars Ariana Grande as Glinda and imagines the 2 witches earlier than the occasions of “The Wizard of Oz,” is due in November.) On Sunday night time in New York, Erivo will host the 78th Tony Awards, 9 years after she gained the prize for main actress in a musical for her Broadway debut as Celie in “The Color Purple.”
But for exhibits just like the one in Houston, Erivo is aiming for one thing looser, extra spontaneous, barely lower-key.
“The concert before that one, I’d taken off my shoes partway through,” she recollects. “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 extra intimate than the roof-raising she’s recognized for, the LP ponders the private drama of romance and intercourse — from flirtation to dedication to betrayal and again — in songs that put 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” additionally represents a return to Erivo’s roots within the soul music she beloved “before I met the musical theater version of myself,” as she places it. Amongst her faves: Marvin Gaye, Musiq Soulchild, Roberta Flack and Brandy, whose 1998 album “Never Say Never” — launched when Erivo was 11 — she singles out for its refined concepts about concord.
Erivo is a faithful pupil of R&B historical past and an eloquent assayer of what distinguishes the classics; she will be able to discuss in depth concerning the precision of Flack’s preparations and concerning the peculiar modifications in “Day Dreaming” by Aretha Franklin (whom she portrayed in Season 3 of Nationwide Geographic’s “Genius” collection). Her data and expertise have made her one thing of a fixture on the Kennedy Heart Honors, the place she’s paid loving tribute to the likes of Dionne Warwick and Earth, Wind & Fireplace.
But she’s no mere revivalist: As a musical thinker, she’s at all times trying to find methods to individualize the hallmarks of a convention; as a queer Black girl, she’s at all times elevating questions on whom any custom is supposed 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 affix the L.A. Phil at Coachella, the place she carried out 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 provides.
That aptitude was on show earlier at February’s Grammy Awards, the place Erivo sang “Fly Me to the Moon” with Herbie Hancock accompanying her on piano as a part of a tribute to the late Quincy Jones (who organized Frank Sinatra’s definitive 1964 recording of the jazz commonplace).
“They asked if I could do it, and I was like, ‘I can, but I’m not Frank,’” she recollects, curled on a settee within the studio’s management room. She’s sporting an extended, drapey skirt with excessive slits that reveal her tattooed legs, and her signature nails click on in opposition to each other as she gestures along with her fingers. “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 end result was a shocking but delicate deconstruction of the tune — an beautiful little two-hander that felt like a dialog between Erivo and Hancock.
“When I went out into the audience afterward, I bumped into Beyoncé,” Erivo says, grinning on the reminiscence. “She was like, ‘You’re an alien, and I love it.’”
The daughter of Nigerian immigrants, Erivo grew up in London and studied performing on the Royal Academy of Dramatic Artwork. After graduating in 2010, she carried out in varied theatrical productions across the U.Okay.; her large break got here in 2013 when she was forged within the “Color Purple” revival in London that finally transferred to Broadway. In 2019, she was nominated for actress in a number one function on the Academy Awards for her efficiency within the title function of Kasi Lemmons’ Harriet Tubman biopic; a second actress nod got here for her flip as Elphaba in “Wicked.”
Erivo recorded a lot of her new album on this very studio whereas on breaks from taking pictures “Wicked.” She’d sit in right here along with her producer, Will Wells, and construct 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 mostly 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 on a second mission amid the urgent calls for of a primary. “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.”
Certainly, with “I Forgive You” and the Tonys on the best way, Erivo has additionally been getting ready for an additional upcoming gig: In August, she’ll play Jesus Christ — “That’s a funny sentence,” she says with fun — in a manufacturing of “Jesus Christ Superstar” on the Hollywood Bowl that can 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 concerning the last 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, trying to find the correct phrases to explain Lloyd Webber’s oeuvre, which additionally contains 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 couple of strains from “Memory,” the outdated “Cats” warhorse, bending notes and inserting little vocal thrives right 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 manufacturing of “Jesus Christ Superstar” on the Hollywood Bowl in August.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Occasions)
Lambert, the one-time “American Idol” runner-up who’s gone on to a various profession in music, theater and tv, factors out that when “Jesus Christ Superstar” premiered, its rock sound was controversial within the context of a spiritual 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 comparable ideas about her bodily look, which has grown extra distinctive — and maybe extra provocative — as she’s gotten extra well-known. Requested to call the musicians she thinks of as her fashion icons, she mentions Pores and skin, the frontwoman of the English rock group Skunk Anansie.
“She carved out her own space and just occupied it,” she says of Pores and skin, a Black girl who appeared on the quilt of Skunk Anansie’s 1995 debut sporting 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.” Although Erivo says she’s felt embraced by Black ladies 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 really non-public romantic relationship with the filmmaker Lena Waithe, grew to become an nearly inescapable pop-cultural presence through the epic press tour for “Wicked,” which with estimated worldwide field workplace gross sales of greater than $750 million is now the highest-grossing adaptation of a musical in film historical past.
As she readies herself to advertise the second movie, is she feeling pre-exhausted by the interviews and the purple carpets and the glad-handing to return?
“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.”
Wanting again on the viral “holding space” meme spawned from a chat Erivo and Grande had with a journalist from Out journal, Erivo says she understands why it grew to become such a phenomenon: “It’s brilliant because we’re in three different places — we’re all having our own experience simultaneously.”
But for probably the most half, 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 many 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 of which Glinda tune she would possibly prefer to sing if she and Grande swapped “Wicked” roles? She considers the query in silence for a great 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 additionally relish the prospect to carry out the present’s opening quantity, “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 provides.
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande at January’s 82nd Golden Globe Awards.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Occasions)
That’s possible what number of followers really feel about Erivo’s tackle “Defying Gravity,” which has been streamed greater than 145 million occasions on Spotify and even charted on Billboard’s Pop Airplay tally — a rarity nowadays for a tune from Broadway. Is Erivo bored with the tune?
“I don’t think I am, because of what it means to people,” she says. Requested what her favourite a part of the tune is, she says she has three, every of which she sings to reveal.
“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 Half 1 of the film. “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 tune, anybody watching March’s Oscars ceremony — the place Erivo and Grande carried out a medley of songs from “Wicked,” “The Wiz” and “The Wizard of Oz” — needed to be amused by the glimpse of a prompter displaying Erivo the lyrics to “Defying Gravity,” as if she would possibly want them.
“You can see I’m not looking at it at all,” she says with fun. “It’s definitely one of those things that’s ingrained in my brain forever.” Even so, “Defying Gravity” doesn’t at present have a spot in Erivo’s live performance 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, each of which are inclined to take up all of the out there oxygen in a room. “Give me 20 years.”
Talking of which: Whose profession does Erivo view as a mannequin as she continues to maneuver between singing and performing? “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.”
