THE BREAKOUT
BY MOST STANDARDS, Cynthia Erivo has had an exceptional year. 2018 saw her film career begin in earnest: she has her first two movies coming out in the autumn months — Drew Goddard’s ’60s-set noir Bad Times At The El Royale and Steve Mcqueen’s highbrow thriller Widows. Both critically acclaimed, both impressive calling cards for the 31-year-old from Stockwell, London.
But by her own recent standards, Cynthia Erivo has had a pretty normal year. In 2016 she won the Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple. In 2017, she added a Grammy and Emmy for the same show. Cynthia Erivo has been on a roll for a while now.
But to return to her burgeoning movie career: her first movie role (although being released second) was as Belle in Widows, playing the one non-widowed member of a four-strong
gang, who decide to carry out a heist to solve their money issues. In Mcqueen’s hands, the film belies its Lynda La Plante/itv drama origins — it’s an important movie. It was conceived and filmed before the Time’s Up movement began, but its central quartet of four capable women couldn’t be more timely.
“I don’t think Steve knew that [at the start],” says Erivo. “He didn’t know all this was coming. I just feel he’s a really forward thinker. He thought it was time to see something like this. The film is really about the four women, and what they’re going through. They’re able to show their strength and take control of their lives — the heist becomes a by-product. I feel like the film moves the conversation forward. I feel it changes the way people see women in these kinds of roles. And I think it gives us a chance to do things differently.”
It’s a significant film, then, but in terms of making Erivo a bone fide movie star, her performance in Bad Times At The El Royale outdoes even the impact of Widows.
Ostensibly, the smart, motel-set crime thriller is an ensemble piece, albeit an ensemble with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. But not only does Erivo hold her own alongside the likes of Jeff Bridges, Dakota Johnson and Chris Hemsworth’s bare torso, she emerges as the star.
“I didn’t realise until I watched it,” she says laughing at the moment, as she saw the film for the first time at the premiere, when it dawned on her that her character was actually the lead. “Obviously I read the script and I was there while we were filming, but when I saw it I was like, ‘Oh! I’m really in this movie.’ In my head, Jeff was the lead. Maybe I just normalised it. Maybe I decided I wasn’t in my head to make it easier to do. It’s so strange.”
So, a pretty good start to her film career then. And she has three more films coming up in 2019 — YA sci-fi Chaos Walking (an adaptation of the first book in Patrick Ness’ acclaimed trilogy) with Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley, John Ridley’s indie sci-fi Needle In A Timestack, and Harriet, a biopic of escaped slave and abolitionist Harriet Tubman who led hundreds to freedom on the Underground Railroad. “It’s a story that needs to be told,” she says. And she’s playing the lead character.
Another normal, exceptional year in the life of Cynthia Erivo, then.