‘I DESIRE TO BE NOTHING BUT MYSELF’

FROM BROADWAY SUPERSTAR TO TWO-TIME OSCAR-NOMINEE, CYNTHIA ERIVO IS CARVING OUT QUITE A CAREER – AND SMASHING GLASS CEILINGS ALONG THE WAY. AS SHE STEPS INTO HER LATEST ROLE AS ARETHA FRANKLIN IN A TV BIOPIC, ELLA DOVE DISCOVERS SHE’S ONLY JUST GETTING STARTED

If there’s a word that best describes Cynthia Erivo, it has to be authentic. I sense it from the moment she logs on to our Zoom call, dressed in a baggy Luther Vandross T-shirt, gold chains, a ring through her nose and a bright orange beret covering her bleached blonde buzz cut. Her talon nails are a rainbow of colours and glitter, each one a different design. She taps them to her face as she talks. The British actor has a Grammy, a Tony and an Emmy award to her name, all accrued from her breakout stage role in The Color Purple, the production that took her from London to Broadway in 2015, and changed her life. She’s since settled in Los Angeles, notched up two Oscar nominations for her role in 2019 film Harriet, and become pals with Oprah Winfrey. She currently has Hollywood at her feet, but that glitzy world and the stereotypes that come with it, she quickly points out, isn’t one that she has any intention of trying to ‘fit in’ to.

‘I desire to be nothing but myself,’ she tells me, her tone thoughtful yet firm, with a distinct trace of her East London roots. ‘I’ve never felt any pressure about my appearance. It’s why I can sit in front of you with bleached blonde eyebrows and piercings and nails. I don’t want to look like anyone else. I enjoy mixing it up because when a little brown girl switches on the screen and sees me, she sees that it’s okay to look like this. And then we’ve changed someone.’

As a little girl herself, Erivo explains, she ‘wanted to try everything. I was quite nosy, and I loved learning.’ Born to Nigerian parents, home was in London’s Upton Park with her mother, Edith, a nurse, and her younger sister, Stephanie. Her father ‘wasn’t in the picture’, having left when she was very young, but her mum picked up on her talents early on. ‘She says I was a happy kid who used to hum when I ate, so that’s how she knew I could sing,’ Erivo recounts with a broad smile.

Her earliest memory of performing was aged five, when she sang a solo of Silent Night in her school nativity play. ‘I was playing a shepherd and they asked me to sing it on my own, I don’t know why,’ she says modestly. ‘I just know that at the end of this play, there was a little version of me standing at the front of the stage, singing. And at the end, people were clapping. It was at that point I realised, “If I do this, it makes people happy.” For me, that connection was important. It was something I knew I wanted to continue.’

She went on to join a drama group, but a career in acting, she says, seemed unreachable. ‘I just didn’t think it was a thing. I’d never seen it happen to someone like me.’ Instead, she signed up to do a degree in music psychology at the University of East London, but quickly realised that it ‘didn’t feel right’. ‘I just felt like I was in the wrong place,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t going to lectures because I was bored. It felt like something wasn’t connecting.’

So, after joining a local theatre company and being urged by one of the tutors to apply for drama school (on her first day there, no less), she did exactly that. ‘I remember her saying, “You should go to RADA,” and I didn’t know what that was,’ she laughs. ‘I was like, if it’s called the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, there’s no way I’m getting in. That’s just not happening!’

But happen it did. Erivo dropped out of university, became a fully fledged RADA graduate and, after various stage roles including Deloris Van Cartier in Sister Act and the abused and uneducated Celie in a West End run of The Color Purple, she landed her first screen role in 2015, as Magdalene in an episode of E4 sitcom Chewing Gum. The semi-autobiographical series was written and created by Erivo’s childhood friend, and now award-winning actor and producer, Michaela Coel.

‘It was so great to see her in the driving seat,’ she smiles, and eagerly assures me that as the pair’s stars have risen, with Erivo moving Stateside later that year when The Color Purple headed to Broadway and Coel pursuing stardom in the UK, their friendship has remained strong.

Erivo explains that she owes a lot to her decision to head across the pond that year, but admits it was far from an easy decision ‘It was 50/50 when I was waiting to board the plane,’ she remembers. ‘I had my mum and my best friend there to wave me off, both crying, and before I left for the airport, I said goodbye to my sister, who gave me two charms for my bracelet – an Oscar and a microphone. She asked me why I’d left stuff behind in the house when I wasn’t coming back. That comment was like a kick to my chest, because I genuinely thought I would be.’

But there was conviction beneath the sadness. ‘Just before I was going to the US, I was starting to feel like there was no space for me in the UK,’ she says. ‘Mainly because there’s a preconceived notion of who and what a Black woman is and can do, which is difficult to deal with

‘I’VE NEVER FELT PRESSURE ABOUT MY APPEARANCE’

when you are a creative person. When I would try to find that space, I felt like doors kept shutting, as though the ceiling got lower and lower. I think and I hope that things are changing now, but growing up, there just weren’t many examples of women like me. The first person I remember is Floella Benjamin, and that was in the late 1990s. And maybe Moira Stewart presenting the news.’

It seems that Erivo certainly found her place, racking up roles in big-budget films including Widows and Bad Times At The El Royale, while collecting a number of A-list friends and acquaintances along the way. She now counts Oprah, one of the producers of The Color Purple, among her phone contacts. ‘She’s a wealth of knowledge about all things and she’s always very kind,’ she says. And while she was wowing Broadway audiences with that very performance as Celie, one of those audience members was none other than Aretha Franklin.

‘It was awesome meeting Aretha,’ she recalls, eyes glinting with the memory. ‘She was one of those women who didn’t need to do anything that she didn’t want to do. So if she didn’t like the show, she could have left halfway through. But she stayed for the entire thing and then came backstage. I remember her telling me I could sing. It was just amazing.’

It’s no wonder, then, that she’s so enthralled by her upcoming role as the Queen of Soul herself. Erivo is bringing Franklin’s personal and professional story to life in an anthology series coming soon to National Geographic. ‘It’s a big undertaking,’ she sighs. ‘It was daunting because I really wanted to get it right. She was one of my heroes because of the way she would tell stories through song.’

While Hollywood has clearly propelled her to new heights, Erivo would be the first to admit that diversity – or the lack of it – isn’t a problem that she’s left behind. In fact, she’s seen it first-hand. When she was nominated for two Oscars (Best Actress and Best Original Song) last year for her role as slave trade abolitionist Harriet Tubman in the biographical film Harriet, her excitement was ‘bittersweet’. Erivo was the only Black actor to be nominated in any category. ‘I want to make sure it doesn’t look like this every single time,’ she said at the time.

When we speak about what can be done to stamp out racial injustice, her tone takes on a new passion. ‘We have to stop deciding what kind of people Black people are,’ she urges. ‘We have to start seeing us as human beings – flawed, different, compassionate, sensual, sad, joyous – all of these complicated, complex states exist in us, too, and should be replicated for stage and screen. We need representation – real representation.’

It was for this reason that when that same year Erivo was invited to perform at the BAFTAS, after the event received widespread criticism due to the fact that every nominee was white, she refused. ‘I just felt insulted,’ she shrugs when I ask if it felt tokenistic. ‘It felt like a last

‘WE HAVE TO STOP DECIDING WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE BLACK PEOPLE ARE’

gasp effort to try to rectify a huge problem that BAFTA didn’t seem to want to address, because they didn’t think anyone would notice. It felt like the work I’d done that year had been reduced to performing to entertain people, which I just didn’t feel good about. It was filling a blank – and I wasn’t prepared to play a part in that.’

Has she always been someone who speaks out, I wonder? ‘I think so,’ she muses. ‘It might be my Capricorn nature. I’m stubborn like that. I’m not very good at lying either, so if I don’t agree with something, then I’m probably quite vocal about it. It’s not that I want to be obnoxious, it’s just that if I’m asked, I can’t say “I’m fine with it” if I’m not.

I also think it’s really important because I’m visible to encourage people to stand up for what they believe in.’

It’s clear that Erivo is keen to use her platform for positive change, and having had therapy herself in the past, mental health awareness is another cause that is close to her heart. ‘Especially for Black women, because it can be a taboo subject for us,’ she says. ‘For so long, we’ve been taught to grin and bear it.

The less we talk about it, the less we normalise it, when, actually, the healthier thing to do is to find someone who is qualified to help you work through things in a way we can’t always do on our own.’

While she’s refreshingly open about universal issues that are ‘very human’, retaining her private life is something Erivo will not compromise on. ‘Privacy is a thing I try to keep quite special,’ she says carefully. She’s frank about the kind of life she leads away from the spotlight – ‘I don’t go out very often, I just chill out. I read, I cook, I take long walks. I’m just a normal kind of gal.’ But when I ask if fame affects her romantic relationships, she pauses. ‘I guess so? But [relationships] are for the people who are going through them. I think that when you start to share that kind of stuff with everyone, there’s a certain ownership that happens.’ She gives me a ‘no hard feelings’ smile. ‘There are things I want to speak about, and things that no one needs to know.’

Passionate about breaking down barriers and making herself heard, I’m curious as to what Erivo would like her legacy to be. She drums her glittering nails against her cheek, pensive. ‘To be honest, I don’t know if it would be about work,’ she muses. ‘I could talk about the practical things, like I’d love to create a school at some point. But more than anything, I hope that there will be little sparks of who I am left in each of the people I’ve met – be it a bit of happiness, determination, or giving yourself a chance to do what you love. My want to experience the fullness of life – I hope that is what is left behind.’ Genius: Aretha is coming to National Geographic soon