Cynthia Erivo Amends Comments About Fan-Edited ‘Wicked’ Poster: I Just Wanted to ‘Protect’ the Character

Cynthia Erivo is defying gravity when it comes to keeping the debate over the “Wicked” fan-edited posters afloat.

The actress told Entertainment Tonight that she “probably should have called my friends” instead of taking to social media to slam the unauthorized image. The fan-edited poster hid Elphaba’s (Erivo) eyes under her witch’s hat in a nod to the famous ad from the original Broadway production. The faux poster was an alteration to the official Universal Pictures marketing materials in which Elphaba’s full face is on display as Glinda (Ariana Grande) whispers in her ear.

“I probably should have called my friends, but it’s fine,” Erivo said of airing her frustrations. “I’m really protective of the role. I’m passionate about it and I know the fans are passionate about it and I think for me it was just like a human moment of wanting to protect little Elphaba, and it was like a human moment.”

Earlier this month, Erivo said the fan-made image was “deeply hurtful” to her and also the “wildest, most offensive thing” ever.

“The original poster is an ILLUSTRATION. I am a real life human being who chose to look right down the barrel of the camera to you, the viewer…because, without words we communicate with our eyes,” Erivo wrote on her Instagram Stories. “Our poster is an homage not an imitation, to edit my face and hide my eyes is to erase me. And that is just deeply hurtful.”

She continued, “This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen, equal to that awful AI of us fighting, equal to people posting the question, ‘Is your p***[y] green?’ None of this is funny. None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us.”

Jon M. Chu directs the two-part musical adaptation “Wicked” which centers on Erivo’s Elphaba (later known as the Wicked Witch of the West) and Glinda (Grande) befriending one another in college only to later both fall for the same classmate Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) against the political turmoil in the land of Oz, run by the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum). Michelle Yeoh, Bowen Yang, Peter Dinklage, Adam James, Keala Settle, Bronwyn James, Ethan Slater, and Colin Michael Carmichael round out the cast.