Long before people in movie theaters saw Cynthia Erivo soaring through the air and powerfully belting in the recent film adaptation, “Wicked,” Erivo discovered the deeper significance of her role as Elphaba.
When Karis Musongole, who played young Elphaba in the movie, arrived on set early one day, Erivo asked if the then 8-year-old actress wanted to see her fly.
Musongole eagerly agreed and watched the crew prepare Erivo for a flight scene, securing her harness and cape and transforming her into the signature green witch.
As she ascended into the air, Musongole watched in awe. When Erivo landed, she heard Musongole exclaim, “Woah!” and it hit her—the realization that she was inspiring the next generation of Elphabas.
“That’s what makes it really special. That there are little girls that look like me who are gonna see that and go ‘I can fly,’” said Erivo as she told the story in an interview with BuzzFeed UK. “And there are little girls that don’t look like me who are gonna go, ‘I can fly.’ That’s awesome.”
Elphaba’s character in “Wicked” is looked down upon and called evil for having green skin, and songs like “I’m Not That Girl” highlight the emotional complexity of feeling unwanted and unworthy based on personal identity, something that some Black women found relatable.
Sophomore musical theater major Tyler Patterson and his mother saw “Wicked” at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, and as a Black woman, she identified with the story in this way.
“From the get-go, there’s already an establishment that she is outcasted into a different society because of the color of her skin,” Patterson said. “She [his mom] was like, that’s the tale of a Black person, a Black woman, anyone who is a person of color in this country.”
Anandi Applewhite, a sophomore TV and film major from New York City, was excited to see Erivo in the role, and it reminded her of the representation Halle Bailey provided as Ariel in “The Little Mermaid” to Black women. Like Patterson’s mother, she noticed parallels between “Wicked” and the Black experience.
“I think that Cynthia Erivo’s portrayal of Elphaba was especially resonant to Black women because I feel like we’re always being called out or laughed at or looked at,” Applewhite said.
“Or just the brunt of so many jokes, in terms of how our hair looks, how our body looks, what we look like, our skin color.”
Patterson credited Erivo’s 2016 Tony performance of the song “I’m Here” from the musical “The Color Purple” with establishing his love of musical theater and inspiring him to change lives through performances. He saw subtleties in her portrayal of Elphaba as a crucial role of representation for the Black community.
“Something that the movie I think did well is they played on the idea of her being a Black actor. They gave her micro braids, the nails in the movie, that was really specific,” Patterson said.
Erivo said in multiple interviews that she wanted Elphaba to have micro braids and nails to ensure that her racial identity wasn’t gone beneath the green.
“I needed it to be connected to me as a Black woman,” Erivo said in an interview with the British Blacklist.
In addition to the Black representation provided by Erivo, the themes of “Wicked”—Elphaba being treated differently for her skin color and advocating for equal treatment of animals—echo fights for equality in real life.
Noel Desire Best, a sophomore musical theater major from Houston, Texas by way of Cape Town, South Africa, said Erivo’s experience as a Black woman added layers to the character and resonated with some of her experiences and saw the same for people around her.
“My sister, she was sitting next to a young girl who was crying right after she watched it because she was like, ‘they treated her so badly.’” Best said. “And for little girls to understand what’s happening, and maybe had a different experience or similar experience, was just so beautiful that she was able to connect in that way.”
Best sees this as an opportunity to reimagine roles for Black women and allow them to fully embody the human experience.
“My whole thing of going into acting is making sure that people understand that we’re human beings, and it’s important that we can share these experiences in a way to build empathy and compassion for each other’s experiences, whether it be different,” she said.
Jon M. Chu, the director of “Wicked” sought to normalize representation and reflect what the world looks like even in a fictional setting.
“I always feel like fantasy films are sort of this standard of what a story is supposed to be like. They’re timeless and they live forever,” Chu said in a GLAAD interview. “‘Wizard of Oz’ is an American story so the idea of re-representing what a fantasy world should look like was very important to me.”
Chu sees representation as part of his responsibility as a director. In his TedTalk, “The Pride and Power of Representation in Film,” he said he’s felt this way since his work on “Crazy Rich Asians.”
“Seeing us on the screen has a power to it. The only way I can describe it is pride,” Chu said.
As she enters the film industry, Applewhite hopes to do something similar for the Black community—prove that Black women can have roles, both in front of the camera and behind, as directors, writers, cinematographers and crew members.
“[We] have other skills other than just hair, makeup, nails, stuff like that,” Applewhite said. “We deserve more roles for us other than just being typecast as the stereotypical Black girl or the token Black person in a show.”
Both Patterson and Applewhite see actresses like Erivo who step beyond stereotypical roles as expanding the possibilities for other Black actors and avoiding the typecasting that’s historically happened in the industry, where Black women were portrayed through stereotypes as loud and aggressive, typically in roles like nannies and maids.
“It allows people that look like me, my sister, my mother and my grandma, people of every generation, to all look at this movie and appreciate what has been done before, what is being done now and what will be continually done in the future,” Patterson said.
Coph edited by Anijah Franklin
