Cynthia Erivo Calls Out Public ‘Annoyance’ Over Ariana Grande Friendship

Cynthia Erivo is reflecting on the attention her friendship with “Wicked” co-star Ariana Grande received while on the press tour for the movie musical and its sequel.

The theater star and singer has rocketed to greater heights of fame following Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of “Wicked,” which stars Erivo as the wicked witch Elphaba opposite Grande’s Glinda the Good. Many moments from the press tour for the 2024 film went viral online, and the close relationship between the stars was called into question.

“It was interesting that there were many people who had become psychologists from their couches,” Erivo told The Guardian during an interview for her upcoming courtroom drama “Prima Facie.” “There was this weird sort of, what’s the word I’m looking for … annoyance … at the fact that two women could actually be friends. Like, why are they friends? Why are they connected? There must be something wrong with them.”

Many viral moments included the co-stars hugging, crying and — perhaps most infamously — “holding space” by pinching each other’s pointer fingers. “Why are they showing emotion? How dare they cry? And how dare they laugh? And how dare they be emotive and alive?” Erivo asked.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” she added. “Because if we were dead behind the eyes and showing no emotion, there would have been something else to say about it. I wish there was someone who could have been like, ‘Right, this is the proper balance of emotion that you should show. Don’t show this. Don’t show that. Just this amount.’”

One of the most memorable moments happened when Erivo jumped into action after a man grabbed Grande on the red carpet in Singapore. Erivo described the moment as terrifying and said her reaction was just “‘Get this man away from us now.’”

The internet began positioning Erivo as Grande’s “bodyguard,” a description she feels uncomfortable with. She said that reaction was centered in misogyny and misogynoir. “I was like: ‘Oh, you think because I look like this that you could talk to me this way about something that was a human thing that I would have done for any friend, and hopefully a friend would have done for me,’” she said. “But I must be a bodyguard.”