- Cynthia Erivo plays Elphaba in Wicked – a character who was born with green skin
- Erivo has revealed how long it would take to be ‘greenified’ before shooting on the movie began each day
- The actor also opened up about the ‘huge responsibility’ she felt when taking on one of the musical’s biggest numbers, Defying Gravity
Cynthia Erivo is the star of Wicked.
But while fans have done nothing but praise her enormous talent, there’s something else they have been dying to know – just how long did it take to turn the actor green?
Erivo plays Elphaba in The Wizard of Oz prequel – and, as we all know from the 1939 movie, the Wicked Witch of the West is known for her green skin color.
In a chat with Angelina Jolie for Variety’s Actors on Actors series, Erivo, 37, broke down how she would get ready for her scenes.
“It would take about two hours and 45 minutes, to four hours, depending on how much we were doing before we got on set,” she told Jolie. “Because it was everything: so the green, which would be a primer, and then the airbrush would be my whole head – if my hair moved either side, you would see a green scalp.
“But there were days where I would have full body, so I was green everywhere – and that would take a long time. And then you add the detail work, so my freckles and my contacts with the eyes. My hands and the inside of my hands, my nails… the whole thing. And I wanted to, because I also wanted to see the transformation. I wanted to see someone green.”
However, because the complete transformation took so long to complete, Erivo explained that there were some members of the cast and crew who had never seen her as anything other than the greenified Elphaba.
“There were people on set who had never seen me out of the green,” she revealed. “So when I would walk on set, that would be the first time they met me as Elphaba, but they wouldn’t have met me as Cynthia at all. Because I would have to start [my makeup] before we would rehearse, so then I would walk out in my own clothes as a green person, as Elphaba.
“But I loved that, because it meant that when we’d start shooting, I was her [Elphaba], and they didn’t know anything but her. So the reactions were always like… the staring, the looking, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s green’. I loved that because it just added to the experience of her and playing her. I’d never done anything like it. But I love it.”
‘Big Cynthia wanted to make everyone proud’
Erivo also broke down how she felt about singing Defying Gravity.
The jaw dropping track closes the first half of the 2003 Broadway musical – as well as the movie, as the story has been split into two films, the second of which will be released in theaters next November.
Without giving too much of the plot away, the song serves as the moment Elphaba realizes she has to go it alone in Oz – and Erivo revealed how she felt a “huge responsibility” when singing it.
“I felt really proud of being able to figure out that physical, practical side of it. But I think the journey of getting to that moment – not just in the film, but the journey I’ve taken to get to here,” she explained. “Being at drama school at 20, putting myself through drama school, finishing at 23, not getting jobs, not really being seen, not really feeling accepted.
“Feeling very odd, very different, and having to figure out how to make my own way through this, because this business is hard. I also knew that there are so many people who want to feel seen, who want to know that it’s possible to exceed people’s expectations of them, and exceed your own expectations. I kind of, even in that moment, wanted to exceed my own expectations of what I could do.”
Erivo continued, “So I think I just had to channel several different things: little Cynthia who didn’t know she could do this, who would be here; big Cynthia who wanted to make everyone proud and herself proud.
“I wanted it to feel like the complete package, that it was servicing not just my desires, but the desires of everyone who’d actually come together to make this thing happen. The desires of those who need something to say, ‘You can do anything you put your mind to, even when it’s scary’. I was so ready to do it.”
Where can I watch the Cynthia Erivo and Angelina Jolie Actors on Actors conversation?
You can watch the full conversation between Cynthia Erivo and Angelina Jolie from the series here:
