Cynthia Erivo Addresses Whether She’s ‘Actually Friends’ With Ariana Grande After ‘Wicked’
Categoria: Musica
The Tony winner also discussed the "insidious" response to her protecting Grande in Singapore.
Por Billboard | 27/05/2026
Cynthia Erivo knows about how popular it was for the internet to dissect her friendship with Wicked costar Ariana Grande last year, something the Tony winner addressed in a Variety cover story published Wednesday (May 27). Related Man Who Grabbed Ariana Grande at ‘Wicked’ Premiere Banned From Singapore Cynthia Erivo Crosses 2026 London Marathon Finish Line to a ‘Wicked’ Hit, Sets New Personal Best Time ‘Wicked: For Good’ Tops $525 Million in Worldwide Grosses: Full List of Top-Grossing Film Adaptations of Broadway Musicals While reflecting on the whirlwind promotional run of the Wicked films that lasted throughout 2024 and 2025, Erivo addressed some of the misconceptions about herself and the pop star that ran rampant online for months. “It’s very interesting, watching what people’s perception is versus what the reality actually is,” she told the publication. “Lots of psychologists seated at home deciding who we were, what we were going through, what we were doing and why.” “I think that people didn’t really believe that we were actually friends,” she continued, noting that she and Grande still text each other just about every day. “But that’s also because people don’t know me very well. If I’m a friend, then I’m a friend. If I’m not, then I’m not.” The internet’s theories about the costars were wide-ranging, with some commentators speculating that they were romantically involved and others deciding that Erivo and Grande were either too close or secretly competing against each other. It was also common to see netizens comparing the two women’s appearances, especially after the Pinocchio star pushed away a man who’d rushed onto the red carpet at Wicked: For Good ‘s Singapore premiere in November and grabbed the “Yes, And?” singer. “I think that we haven’t really come to terms with the insidious nature of how we view Black women,” Erivo told Variety . “And I’m sure people will read this and think, ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, it’s not about that.’ But it is. Because that’s what was being made fun of. It was my physique; it was my shape; it was the fact that I was bald; it was about what I looked like. And because of that, there was this assumption that I was bigger than my costar, and so I had to be controlling or protecting, and that was my role. I would hazard a guess that it would not have been the same had it been the other way around.” She added that “in a way,” the incident — which resulted in the perpetrator spending nine days behind bars before he was banned from Singapore — discouraged her from campaigning for Academy Award recognition after the second Wicked film premiered last fall. “I just felt like my humanity had been bastardized,” the performer said. “I felt like something I did instinctively had been made to be something that it simply was not because of the way people see women who look like me … I just didn’