When Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande began their Wicked journey together, the pair vowed to support and protect one another. For a while, they existed within a bubble of rehearsals and film production. Now that the film has been released, Erivo and Grande are no longer just Elphaba and Glinda — they’re the celebrity figures on the receiving end of comments from countless strangers online with easy access to share criticism and few consequences for their speculation. But Erivo is holding up her commitment to protecting Grande.
“I think cyberbullying is quite dangerous, to be honest,” Erivo said during a recent appearance at the Red Sea Film Festival in Saudi Arabia. She was asked specifically about the criticism that has been aimed at Grande over the course of their press run for Wicked. “It’s easy to be behind the computer and type words about a person you don’t know anything about,” she continued. “I think that the more we can protect ourselves from that the better.”
Erivo added: “We decided that we were going to make sure we protected each other, that we were kind to one another, that we were going to work with each other and build a relationship, which meant that when we were on set, we both felt really safe to play and to do the roles as we needed.”
Grande has candidly spoken about her experience being prodded and dissected online. “Yes, And,” the lead single from her latest album, Eternal Sunshine, essentially told those weighing in on her personal life and physical appearance to get a life and mind their business. But the scrutiny only intensified. Fans and spectators alike criticized the actress and musician for frequently crying and becoming overwhelmed with emotion during interviews about Wicked, a role she described as her ultimate dream years before landing it. Then came the speculation about her body, with users online compiling threads of supposed evidence that Grande is struggling with an eating disorder.
Earlier this week, Grande came to her own defense from these claims. “From what you’re wearing to your body to your face to your everything — there’s a comfortability that people have commenting on that, that I think is really dangerous,” Grande said in an interview with Sally. “And I think it’s dangerous for all parties involved.” She added that “no one has the right to say shit” about her body, especially when she has been “a specimen in a petri dish” since she was around 16 years old.
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“It’s hard to protect yourself from that noise, and I think that it’s uncomfortable no matter what scale you’re experiencing it on,” Grande said. “Even if you go to Thanksgiving dinner, and someone’s granny says, ‘Oh my God, you look skinnier! What happened?’ or ‘You look heavier! What happened?’ … However, you all can protect yourselves from that noise — whether it’s at a family reunion or online, if you gotta block people, I don’t care if you have to delete the app entirely — you keep yourself safe.”
Erivo also passionately defended herself in the lead-up to Wicked‘s release in response to criticism of the differences between the film poster and that of the beloved Broadway musical. At the time, she called fan edits of the poster, many of which covered her eyes to match the original, “the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen.”
At the Red Sea Film Festival, she said: “The green stands for every person who feels othered … There is a layer of who I am underneath, and Black women walk into spaces that are not necessarily welcoming. It was important to tell that story and have that as a layer, and I was lucky enough to have a director who allowed me to tell that story. That scene when [Elphaba] is told that the green is a problem? Those tears were real. It comes from my understanding of what it feels like to feel that. I cannot tell that story without sharing those emotions.”
