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.
Universal Casts Spell On CinemaCon With Early Look At ‘Wicked Part 1’ With Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo & Michelle Yeoh
deadline.com“We thought we’d give you a little taste of it,” said Universal Pictures boss about Wicked, which is in production in London with Jon Chu directing and Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo in the respective roles of Glinda and Elphaba.
The rough footage, which even some Uni execs haven’t seen, showed, Elphaba getting trained by Michelle Yeoh’s Madame Morrible.
The footage was a BTS reel too with Chu exclaiming “I knew what this movie would be” and how he always wanted to do it for the big screen.
Chu said that Cynthia and Ariana came in and blew the roof off. “The chemistry between Ariana and Cynthia is real and palpable,” said producer Marc Platt.
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