Before embarking on what she calls “the ride of a lifetime” as Elphaba, Cynthia Erivo dissected the songs in “Wicked” and unearthed new meaning.
“Perception is everything,” she says. “What we see as good, what we see as evil can be warped and shifted depending on who’s looking and through what eyes, what lens. Is it really good? Or is it sort of an apparition of good?”
When dissecting the lyrics to “I’m Not That Girl,” Erivo says she realized that those first lines (“hands touch, eyes meet, sudden silence, sudden heat”) could have a different meaning depending on where they come in the story. After an intense moment of connection in the film, it morphed into a moment of reflection.
“There are loads of silence before (Elphaba) even says the first word," Erivo says. "And now, it’s not so much about just saying the words, it’s about understanding what actually happened in this moment.”
The process starts with the lyric, moves to the melody, then settles in the story.
“My process is I do it bit by bit,” Erivo says. “And when you learn the whole story, when you find the journey through it, the push and pull starts to happen.”
When she discovered her character would get a new song for the second film, “Wicked: For Good,” Erivo says she was in heaven.
“It’s one thing to sing a new song. It’s another to be able to make it (this version) of the character’s own. It was lovely to find the nuances within the music," she says.
Director Jon M. Chu, she says, was a great collaborator, willing to follow his performers into their discovery journeys.
“He learned my language,” she explains. “We would always do different takes and then we’d do one for s---- and giggles and just throw it all out there. He started to realize that if I was able to have the chance to just throw it all out there, we would always get what we needed.”
Often, that surprise take would be the one that was used. “He really got me,” she says.
“Wicked” and its sequel, “Wicked: For Good,” have been life-changing projects, Erivo says. “I don’t think I knew the gravity of what it would be, but I knew, from the beginning, that it was something that would change my life and challenge me.”
Because “The Wizard of Oz” has been an enduring movie musical, it's likely “Wicked” will be around for a long period of time, too. Erivo has had countless fans tell her how much the first film meant to them and how it has affected them. “It helped people shift the way they feel and think about themselves and others … and that’s really special,” she says.
In addition to bringing her a best actress Oscar nomination and, more recently, a Grammy nomination for a duet with Ariana Grande, “Wicked” has taught Erivo that “the work you put in really does matter. Sometimes the hard work doesn’t feel so much like hard work until you step away. You put yourself through crazy things. You put yourself in a harness. You will be hoisted up in the air. You do the training at 3 a.m. You sit in a chair for two and a half hours to be green, and it will feel like nothing until you’re done.
"And when you step away, you think, ‘Oh my goodness, that was a lot of work.’ I love this work … and I would do anything I need to in order to represent whichever character I’m playing to the fullest.”
