Fan-edited ‘Wicked’ poster removed Cynthia Erivo’s eyes, and now she’s seeing red
Cynthia Erivo, whose “Wicked” movie hits theaters next month, has spoken out against a fan-edited film poster that resembles the poster for the Broadway show.
A fan posted a TikTok video that compares the two posters and shows the edits being made. Erivo — who plays the green-skinned witch, Elphaba, based on the Wicked Witch of the West from the classic “Wizard of Oz” movie — is given smirking red lips and a dark shadow over her eyes from her wide-brimmed witch hat. Glinda (played by pop star Ariana Grande) whispers into Elphaba’s ear in the poster. Her hand is moved higher, but no changes are made to her hair or face.
“This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen,” Erivo said in an Instagram story, posting the edited version of the poster and calling it degrading.
“The original poster is an ILLUSTRATION. I am a real life human being,” she said, arguing she made an artistic choice to stare down the camera straight to the viewer.
“[W]ithout words we communicate with our eyes,” she said.
The heroine of the blockbuster musical ‘Wicked,’ who is othered because of her skin color, has been primarily played by white actors since 2003.
“Our poster is an homage not an imitation,” Erivo wrote. “[T]o edit my face and hide my eyes is to erase me. And that is just deeply hurtful.”
The original “Wicked” musical is one of the longest-running shows in Broadway history, opening in October 2003 and still running today. It is based on a 1995 novel of the same name, which retells the story of “The Wizard of Oz” in a revisionist light, with the wicked witch as the main character.
The movie is an adaptation of the first act of the musical, and a second movie is set to be released in November 2025.
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