The movie Cynthia Erivo has seen more times than any other: “A million times over”
It takes a pretty special talent to become an Egot winner, which requires a performer to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony award. So special in fact that in all of history, only 21 people have managed the feat, including luminaries like Audrey Hepburn, Elton John and Barbra Streisand. And one person you certainly wouldn’t bet against joining the ranks is British actor and singer Cynthia Erivo, who is just an Oscar away from completing the set.
After an incredibly prolific five years that have been as successful as varied, she has appeared in dramas, including the TV adaptation of Stephen King’s creepy novel The Outsider, Broadway stage shows, and has, of course, wowed audiences the world over with her spectacular and very green performance in the smash hit musical movie Wicked.
Aside from portraying singer Aretha Franklin in a series called Genius, she’s also popped up in a science fiction film called Chaos Walking based on the novel The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. Alongside, she’s somehow found time to release two singles herself and a studio album, which came out in 2021.
She also played the blue fairy in a reboot of Pinocchio directed by Robert Zemeckis, although that didn’t fare anywhere near as well as Wicked—perhaps young people deciding that a determined wooden boy isn’t as exciting as a flying vengeant witch. Erivo also demonstrated she can do thrillers when she lined up alongside Idris Elba in Netflix’s Luther: The Fallen Son before switching neatly back to musical theatre.
In terms of her own influences and works that have inspired her, she makes a varied selection when talking about her favourite five films, one of which is a mid-2000s classic featuring one of the greatest actors of all time: Meryl Streep.
She told Rotten Tomatoes: “First is The Devil Wears Prada, which I watched a million times over. I’m a fashion fanatic, and I love how it’s like a character in the film. I think it’s one of Meryl Streep‘s most amazing performances. I don’t know, there’s just something about it, the subtleties like the little purse of her lips that she does. I think it’s just really cool, and it’s a bit of a guilty pleasure. I loved it. I thought it was brilliant.”
The Devil Wears Prada was a box office smash on release, following the journey of Anne Hathaway’s long-suffering journalist Andy having to deal with Streep’s egocentric fashion editor Miranda on a daily basis in downtown New York. A long-awaited follow-up will be hitting the big screen in 2026, with pretty much all of the original cast back to reprise their roles, including the likes of Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci.
Erivo also chose The Color Purple, the 1985 period drama about feminism and race starring another Egot winner, Whoopi Goldberg, and 2018’s Marvel blockbuster Black Panther. Of the latter, one moment stuck out for her: “There’s the scene in the big battle, where a rhinoceros that comes towards Danai [Gurira], and it stops right in its tracks, inches from her face. There’s just something. Oh, it’s so powerful, it’s so good, so good. And such a delectable moment. I can’t even tell you how much I loved that film.”
With a sequel to Wicked due to hit cinemas later this year, Erivo is likely to garner even more fame and renown and become more successful than she already is, if you can imagine such a thing. Moreover, she will be starring in an ambitious one-woman stage version of Dracula, playing all 23 roles, which will run in London for four months next year.
