Cynthia Erivo

Cynthia Erivo (born January 8, 1987, London, England) is an English actress and singer known for her powerhouse performances in theater, in film, on television, and in music. She gained fame and accolades for her role as Celie in the stage adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple in London (2013) and on Broadway (2015–17), and she achieved international stardom for her portrayal of Elphaba Thropp in the first part of the film adaptation (2024) of the musical Wicked.

Early life, first performances, and education

Erivo grew up in the Stockwell district of south London as the eldest daughter of Nigerian immigrants. Her parents separated when Erivo was young, and, when she was a teenager, Erivo’s father disowned her and her younger sister, Stephanie Erivo. Erivo’s mother, Edith Erivo, supported the family by working as a nurse and sent both her daughters to La Retraite Roman Catholic Girls’ School, a secondary school in Clapham Park.

Erivo told Harper’s Bazaar in 2021 that “Mum always said I sang before I spoke,” and she described her first singing role—at age 5, performing “Silent Night” during a Nativity play. At age 11 she landed a part in a musical version of Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle. By age 15 she was starring in Romeo and Juliet in a youth production at the Young Vic Theatre. She also appeared on television, in the British reality show Trust Me, I’m a Teenager (2003), in which teens give advice to families on navigating their relationships. Despite these early successes, Erivo felt that acting and singing as a career was an unrealistic goal, so in 2004 she enrolled at the University of East London as a music psychology major. This choice proved to be only a short detour: she later transferred to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).

Early stage performances

After graduating in 2010 Erivo immediately found work at that year’s Brighton Festival, playing the role of Ellie, a teen virgin about to have sex with an older man, in Simon Stephens’s Marine Parade. Next Erivo appeared as Leila, a grad student and sex counselor, in I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, London. Shortly afterward she made her West End debut, at the Gielgud Theatre as Madeleine in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (2011), a stage adaptation of Jacques Demy’s 1964 movie. Although Erivo sang only one line in the musical, it was enough to gain the attention of casting director Will Burton, who introduced Erivo to the casting director of the touring stage production of the comedy Sister Act (2011–12). She won the part of Deloris Van Cartier, a nightclub singer disguised as a nun, which Whoopi Goldberg had made famous in the 1992 movie of the same name.

The Color Purple in London and on Broadway and the plays in between

In 2013 Erivo landed the role of Celie, the main character in The Color Purple, in a West End production at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London. Erivo’s turn as an African American woman living in the Jim Crow South earned her such critical acclaim that producers in the U.S. asked her to reprise the role on Broadway. In between she appeared in two plays by William Shakespeare: portraying the Earl of Douglas in an all-female production of Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 (2014) at the Donmar Warehouse, London, and Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2015) at the Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse Theatres, England. At the end of 2015 Erivo duly crossed the Atlantic to play Celie in The Color Purple at the Jacobs Theatre, New York City. Erivo’s Broadway debut was highly praised; indeed, The New York Times called the actor an “incandescent new star.” She received the 2016 Tony Award for best actress in a musical, and the production, including Erivo, won the 2016 Grammy for best musical theater album. The following year Erivo and the cast won a daytime Emmy for outstanding musical performance in a daytime program for their appearance on the Today television show.

Harriet Tubman and other early movie roles

After the run of The Color Purple ended in 2017, Erivo began receiving offers to appear in films. In 2018 she joined the ensemble casts of Drew Goddard’s neo-noir Bad Times at the El Royale, playing a singer named Darlene Sweet, and of Steve McQueen’s heist thriller Widows as Belle, a beautician who becomes a getaway driver. In 2019 she starred in the biopic Harriet as titular abolitionist hero Harriet Tubman—a performance that was singled out for praise by critics. She received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for both best actress and best original song for “Stand Up.”

Television and movies from the early 2020s

Major television roles likewise came Erivo’s way. In 2020 Erivo portrayed private detective Holly Gibney in HBO’s The Outsider, a miniseries based on Stephen King’s 2018 novel of the same name. In 2021 she assumed the role of Aretha Franklin in National Geographic’s anthology series Genius. She was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her performance. Her movies from 2021 include the time-traveling romance Needle in a Timestack and the sci-fi thriller Chaos Walking. Erivo then played the Blue Fairy in Disney’s live-action remake of Pinocchio (2022) and a Liberian refugee who flees to a Greek island in Drift (2023). In addition, Erivo starred alongside Idris Elba in Luther: The Fallen Sun (2023), the film spinoff of his hit BBC show. She played Odette Raine, head of a police unit devoted to particularly serious crimes.

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Wicked

In 2024 Erivo starred alongside Ariana Grande in the first part of the big-screen adaptation of the hit Broadway show Wicked. Based on the book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995) by Gregory Maguire, the Wicked musical is a prequel to the events of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) by L. Frank Baum. It tells the story of Elphaba Thropp (Erivo’s role), a green-skinned student of magic who is fated to become the Wicked Witch of the West. The role introduced Erivo’s talents to new audiences and made her an international celebrity. Moreover, it garnered her nominations for an Oscar, a BAFTA, and a Golden Globe for best actress.

Other projects and personal life

All of Erivo’s successes gave her the opportunity to expand her career into other media. In 2019 she coproduced and lent her voice to Carrier, a scripted science-fiction podcast about a truck driver tasked with transporting mysterious cargo. In 2021 she released Ch. 1 Vs. 1, her first album of original music, as well as Remember to Dream, Ebere, a children’s picture book. While promoting the album, Erivo spoke to The Evening Standard about being queer, and in 2022 she told British Vogue that she identifies as bisexual. Since 2020 Erivo has been romantically linked with producer, writer, and actress Lena Waithe, best known from her work on the American TV series Master of None and for creating the Showtime series The Chi.