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.
Emmy, Tony and Grammy winner Cynthia Erivo steps into the shoes of the Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin in the Nat Geo anthology series Genius: Aretha. “It was an honor and I had this overwhelming sense of responsibility to try and tell the story through her as truthfully as I possibly could with this much grace as I possibly could,” said Erivo, joined by her co-star Courtney B.
Vance at Deadline’s Contenders Television awards-season event.Reflecting on the legacy of Franklin and the indelible mark she left, Erivo remarked, “I guess her legacy could teach us that we shouldn’t really be afraid of the unknown.
Aretha didn’t know whether or not the answer would be yes when she asked to be a producer on her Amazing Grace album. She didn’t know
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