Cynthia Erivo Slams Edits Of The Wicked Poster On Instagram
“It degrades me. It degrades us.”
Cynthia Erivo is setting some boundaries with Wicked fans. Erivo (who plays Elphaba in the movie) took issue with how fans edited the film’s latest poster to make it a more exact recreation of the iconic Broadway one-sheet.
The original Broadway poster is an illustration of Glinda whispering in Elphaba’s ear. Both of their faces are obscured — Elphaba’s eyes are covered by her hat, while part of Glinda’s face is shielded by her hand. But for the movie, they went a slightly different route. Ariana Grande (who plays Glinda) hides less of her face with her hand, and Erivo makes direct eye contact with the camera.
Some fans, disappointed by the poster, altered it to be closer to the original, moving Grande’s hand and lowering the brim of Erivo’s hat to cover her eyes. The edits prompted Erivo to respond. “This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen, equal to that awful Ai of us fighting, equal to people posing the question ‘if your ***** green,’” she wrote on Instagram Stories, alongside an edited Wicked poster.
“None of this is funny. None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us,” Erivo continued. “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.”
“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,” Erivoe added. She followed up by posting the film’s official poster. “Let me put this right here, to remind you and cleanse your palette,” she wrote.
Grande seemingly supported Erivo’s statement, posting an IG Story of her own: the unedited Wicked poster.
Fans had mixed reactions to Erivo’s IG. “people only edited it like that so it resembles the poster from the 2003 musical? it's not that serious, her comparing it to deepfakes and AI is honestly such a wild exaggeration. no one wants to degrade her or ‘hide’ her,” one wrote on X, formerly called Twitter.
But others felt Erivo’s concerns were justified. “if you’re having any reaction to this other than ‘we’re sorry and we see you cynthia’ then u are apart of the problem and need to think of other people’s feelings,” one tweeted.
Wicked is coming out Nov. 22.
