Elphaba Shays may be hesitant to go to university, but Cynthia Ario still wants to pursue a Ph.D.
Specifically, the star who plays the alphabet in “WickedScreen is interested in how everyday experiences affect people’s voices, not just when they’re speaking but when they’re singing. After being accepted as a fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2021, Ario wanted to study it, but had to turn down the fellowship due to a busy schedule that never slowed down.
Even though “Wicked” has wrapped filming, having just finished a huge press tour for Part 1, she’s busy campaigning for awards season (including one this week SAG Award nomination), and faces the prospect of another major media blitz when Part 2 opens later this year. She is also starring in, producing and adapting the film version of the Tony-winning Broadway play “Prima Fakei.”
But it was his work as a teacher at his alma mater, London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, that was still on his mind. “Whenever I can tell,” she said in a recent interview, “when someone is told they’re too much, they should be quiet, or they shouldn’t be talking so loudly, it’s up to me.” Transfers how they use their voice. When they sing.”
She explained that when students get to the balloting notes, they seem to back off. “The notes are there. The voice is there,” she finds, but then “they put it in a song. It disappears.”
Meeting in late November, just a week after “Wicked.” opened to a strong $114 million domestically.Erivo was surprisingly as eager to share her theories of vocal psychology as she seemed at ease with her sudden global superstardom.
Even without Elphaba’s green makeup, microbraids and black dress, Erivo was instantly recognized by patrons at Sardi’s in Manhattan’s theater district, where we spoke. Wearing a two-toned Regina Pio skirt and an olive sizzling coral feathered sweater, she also sported her signature glam: long bejeweled nails, pierced nose and ears, and a close-shaven haircut. Below, her caricature hangs on the restaurant’s celebrity wall, an honor she received after winning a 2016 Tony Award for her performance as Sally in the Broadway revival of “The Color Purple.” . (He also has an Emmy and a Grammy for performance in the role.)
What connects “The Color Purple,” “Wicked” and other career milestones is the ability to move seamlessly between characters’ distinct personalities and emotional expressions of their inner lives. Sitting down with Erivo gave me the opportunity to appreciate the qualities she shares with him: keen intelligence and inquisitiveness. These traits are most present in the screen performance for which she is best known: the brilliant Aretha Franklin in the book Alphabet, the 2017 miniseries.Genius: Aretha“And the prophetic Harriet Tubman 2019 biopic.
She said that I do not choose roles frivolously. Their intelligence, though manifested in different ways, allows him to enter his psyche” so that hopefully a viewer walks away, thinking they’ve been forgotten, but a day or so later. They are also thinking about this role and what has happened to this role.”
Confidently, Erivo explained that she didn’t want to make the characters disappear but wanted to “stay with you and maybe help you solve some things, remember some things, change some things. is.” She admits that she might be asking too much of the role, but to her, “It’s kind of a thrill, hopefully it can happen.”
It also describes her influence on the “Wicked” creative team after her audition. The film’s director, Jon M. Cho, who first saw it on Broadway, was unsure whether Ario, then 35, would be open to a role that would once again Be young and innocent, especially in the middle of it, as he presented it to her. “Different Vibe” of Oz.
“She completely changed my opinion of what she could do because she came in jeans and a T-shirt,” Cho recalled. “She looked like a little girl, and the way she sang ‘Wizard and Me’ was not like the untouchable Cynthia Erive.”
“It made me believe in Alphabet’s longing and hope for a better place at the beginning of the film,” he asserts, “We were waiting for someone to come into the room and take the role from us instead of us. .With the excuse of why we cast someone, we only wanted to see one person, and he did.
Award voters have also been won over to an extent. Ario was nominated for a Golden Globe, though she lost to Demi Moore. She is now up for a SAG Award and is considered a strong contender when the Oscar nominations are announced on January 19. At the Golden Globes and other appearances, his influence on popular culture continues to resonate. His “Holding Space” interview Along with her “Wicked” co-star Ariana Grande, the song instantly went viral, and inspired countless memes.
Erevo has spent her career defying the expectations of others: first playing Sally in a 2013 revival of “The Color Purple” in London, then for nearly two years after the show moved to New York in 2015. Bringing the house down. Four years later there was a backlash when British-born and raised Ariyo, who is of Nigerian descent, was cast as Tubman. Black settlers who escaped slavery in the American South. But Ariyo received Oscar nominations for both Best Actress and Best Song.
Although he wore extensive green makeup and prosthetic ears in “Wicked,” Ario’s makeovers rarely involve a radical physical change. Standing at 5-foot-1, she appears larger than life because of the icons she wields, her meticulous research process and her intense preparation long before filming.
“Harriet” director Cassie Lemmons said she was blown away by Arevo’s ability to incorporate even the smallest details into scenes that were complex and stressful to shoot. “The first thing we did was have Harriet lead the freedom seekers into a big field. And when Cynthia came, she was Harriet, but then she ran away,” Lemmons said. “It wasn’t the athletic run I saw him do in the movie ‘Je.The widow.’ There was something feminine and normal about her run, even the way she held her dress. It was a pretty fast pace. It brought a gentleness to Harriet that I thought was necessary, but I didn’t know how important it was until it happened to me.
Erivo has a similar mesmerizing moment during “The Wizard and I” in “Wicked,” revealing the ambition, loneliness and self-awareness of a showstopper Elphaba. But, for a brief second, it does more than that: when Elphaba looks in the mirror and sees her skin turning from green to brown and back to green again, the film marks a rare black actress in the beloved role. Acknowledging the power of casting Erio. .
While visiting the “Wicked” set last year, Leslie Odom Jr., who starred alongside Ario in “Harriet” and John Ridley’s romance “Needle in a Time Stick” (2021), saw him shooting the scene. had seen “It was just a joy to see someone who had mastered a handful of subjects. When it’s done at that level of expertise, I find it very moving,” he told me. “But , I also noticed a gentleness and acceptance of myself, which means that work is not torture. I felt like I was watching someone allow themselves to be enough.
And while Erivo’s “Defying Gravity” ending in “Wicked” is such an unforgettable blend of virtuosity, vulnerability and charisma that it’s now impossible for me, an avid “Wicked” theatergoer, to rehearse any other way. Cho pointed out that “he never stops working to master a scene. It takes flexibility, dedication and commitment to the character to see it through.” Seeing him, we all had to step up to that level, and he raised the bar for everyone.