Cynthia Onyedinmanasu Chinasaokwu Erivo (born 8 January 1987) is an English actress, singer, and songwriter.
She is known for her performance as Celie in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple, for which she won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical, the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, and the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program, the latter two she shared with the rest of the cast.
Erivo ventured into films in 2018, with roles in the heist film Widows and the thriller Bad Times at the El Royale. In 2019, she portrayed abolitionist Harriet Tubman in the biopic Harriet, for which she earned nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Issa Rae’s back in front of the camera, and this time, she’s lending her face and expert comedic timing to Roar, a new anthology series from Apple TV+.Roar, an 8-episode dark comedy often utilizing some surrealist themes, tackles issues facing women in various aspects of both personal and professional life.
In the show’s flagship episode, Rae portrays a young black author with a hit book on the bestsellers list, just on the cusp of her big break in Hollywood.
But when she comes out to Los Angeles for her big Hollywood meeting, she discovers their adaptation isn’t exactly what she had in mind.
This exclusive clip finds Rae’s character in a meeting with some Hollywood executives – all white and male – meeting about the potential of selling them the rights to her work.
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