Actress Cynthia Erivo Wants to Tell You a Story

Photography by Axle Jozeph

Styling by Jason Bolden

Cynthia Erivo can sing. No, like, she can really sing. But that’s just the beginning of her story as a nearly EGOT-minted artist.

The London-born actor saw her rising star go supernova after landing the leading role in the highly acclaimed musical The Color Purple on the West End, and she then really took off when the show made a Broadway transfer in 2015 under Oprah Winfrey’s leadership. Ever since, Erivo’s life has been a sort of marathon-sprint-hybrid. 

I first met Erivo a few years ago over a surprise Zoom for a mutual friend’s birthday, just as the pandemic hit. Since then, that same friend has weaved us in and out of each other’s lives, eventually leading up to us being in conversation at the Tribeca Film Festival this past summer, just hours before we both had to be at the Tony Awards, which is very Cynthia. 

ZACH STAFFORD: Something I’ve been thinking about a lot when I think about you and is a question I’ve been dying to ask: How do you sing while running so well in those Instagram videos? 

CYNTHIA ERIVO: [Laughs.] I think it’s become a habit of mine. When I go running in the street, I’m always listening to music and I just sing along. I’ve been doing it for such a long time; it’s all second nature for me. I think it’s just because my lungs are now accustomed to singing while moving in that way. I am the madwoman who runs past you, singing along to the music in her ears. 

ZS: …But singing well, which is quite amazing. Because a lot of us probably sing or talk to ourselves while we’re running, but you are singing better than most people do while standing still! And I didn’t know if it was an ability you picked up from training for Broadway or something. Is there any utility to it or is it just a superpower? 

CE: I think there is a part of me that sort of knows that it’s useful to be able to sing while moving, and I think I removed the idea that it was work and changed it to something that just felt really joyful and fun. 

So I imagined myself…have you ever watched that episode of Friends where Phoebe runs in with her arms flailing like this? [Cynthia flails about.] In my head, that’s how it feels to run and sing at the same time. But in the back of my mind, I know that it’s useful for everything else that I’m doing when I’m on stage. 

ZS: I think I’ve become so obsessed with your ability to sing and run because it feels really poetic to me. When you won the Tony and Emmy and everything else around The Color Purple, it felt like a big sprint of success at the time. But you have sustained it for so long and the run has changed so much. 

CE: I love that. I do. What’s really strange about that is that the run has changed from when I first started in The Color Purple to the way I run now. Mathematically, if you look at just the way I run and the economy of it, it’s different now. And I think that works both with the way I’ve sort of mapped out or been helped out, obviously with my career, because no man is an island. You can’t do it on your own. 

I’ve been afforded the privilege to sort of take a step back when we had a big boost and go, Now what do I want to do? How do I want to do it next? What story do I want to tell? How do I want to move through this next space? 

I’ve been able to really sort of craft the way things look, which means I’ve been able to do things a little bit differently. Sprint. Run. The way I move has changed. 

ZS: What I love about what you’re saying is that the word humanness comes to mind, and it makes me think about your next film, Luther. You said recently in an interview that your character is “by the book, by the law, every step of the way, until she is pushed by circumstances outside her control. That’s the way most people are, both darkness and light.” Talk to me about her. 

CE: This woman is much like every other human being. You’ve said before that humans are contradictions. She is a contradiction. She believes wholeheartedly that things should be done by the book, by the law. The rules should be followed until all of those rules are spun back. It’s a dilemma because in order to solve a problem, she has to go outside of the law. 

Most of us want to think that we’re mostly light. That we’re mostly good. And that we would never do anything wrong or anything that would hurt anyone. But it’s just not true. Because we’re human, and humans make mistakes. Humans will hurt other humans, and humans will be both darkness and light. That’s what makes us human. 

ZS: Was there a character when you were young that got you hooked onto this kind of “complicated villain?” A person that you first see as flat, but who is much more than perceived. 

CE: I don’t think there was any one character that I was hooked on. But there’s a film I always go back to. It will sound trite, but I think there’s something [Meryl Streep] does with this character that is the epitome of dark and light…and it’s The Devil Wears Prada’s Miranda Priestly. 

You don’t know whether she’s really good or evil. She’s sort of floating between both. Then there are moments of real vulnerability, real sadness, and hurt. There are moments where she is horrendous. Then there are moments where she’s sweet and light. And then there are moments where she lets a little bit of kindness shine through. But in a second, that kindness is snatched away. 

ZS: Your next role as Elphaba in Wicked fits all of this so perfectly. I know that you saw the musical for the first time on your 25th birthday. What was that first moment you had outside the show when you walked out? 

CE: It’s so strange. I don’t remember getting out of the theater or getting on the bus. But I remember when I got off the bus, I felt really alive, because I just had never thought about a story that way. 

I think it was the first time I’d seen a villain’s story retold in a way that gave you the reason why they were the way they were. And I just loved the idea that this woman actually had more light in her than people would allow her to have. 

ZS: That makes me think about the Tonys [in June 2022]. When Joaquina Kalukango won and performed, you were really celebrating her and cheering. And I remember when Michaela Coel won an award [in 2021]. You were just so vibrant, and there was not an ounce of jealousy, which I think people in this world expect Black people—especially in the arts—to kind of feel. But you never have that around you. It seems like there’s an abundance of love. 

CE: Because, I mean, it genuinely makes me happy. It makes me happy to see people that I know are working really fucking hard. 

This woman [Joaquina] was on stage with me playing my sister in The Color Purple and was doing it while she was eight months pregnant. She went from a new mother to a Tony winner. And when I was working with her, I remember thinking, This woman is brilliant. She’s amazing. And I loved playing with her every night because she was so committed to being there for me. 

And when it came to Michaela, I’ve known her for such a long time. I’ve known her since I was 18, and she’s done it on her own. She was the first person to give me a role on TV. She was the first person to see me as a person who could do that. She saw beyond where I was, and saw where I was going. 

You are watching people you grew up with become their own wildest dreams. I truly believe that to celebrate the work of others, to celebrate the wins, the joy, all those huge moments that your loved ones have really only can come back to you. 

ZS: Are you familiar with Brené Brown? In her last podcast episode she said she struggled with this idea that people are doing the best that they can. But it feels like you have this kind of incredible belief in good people; that people are good and can become even better. 

CE: Oh, I do. I do think that, because if we have the capacity for good, then there is the possibility that we can do good. And I think if a person isn’t leaning into that, it’s because that’s all they can give, and that doesn’t define them. You can’t judge people. Everyone is dealing with what they’re dealing with, however they can deal with it. 

ZS: Oh, really? I did not know that. 

CE: I’ve been talking to the wonderful professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. about it. [Ed. note: Gates is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.] And he believes it’s a possibility. So we just have to work. I love that people have been given honorary doctorates and I think it’s a wonderful thing, but I’m a glutton for punishment and I would like a real one.
 

ZS: This surprises me zero. I think I heard you say in an interview that when the day arrives that you do get your Oscar, that you hope you will have done the work worthy of it. It was a profound thing to say when so many people are willing just to take any award so they can have it. But you want to work for it. 

CE: I do want to work, because I think when you work for those awards, for those merits, no one can take them away from you. 

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