With a week left until Wicked: For Good hits theaters, Cynthia Erivo is setting the record straight on why some think her performances are political statements.
Appearing on the cover of GQ‘s Men of the Year issue, Erivo said that her performances in Wicked, The Color Purple and every other project she works on are inherently political simply because she is a Black, queer woman, not necessarily because she chooses political roles.
“I think inevitably, because I’m in this body with this skin, in this time, everything I do will be political,” she says. “I’ve been told so many times that I pick controversial roles, and I’m like, ‘Why? Why are the roles I pick controversial?’ I just pick a thing that I feel like I want. If I was a different person, in a different body, in a different skin, it wouldn’t be controversial.”
The near-EGOT did point out, however, that she is interested in “f–king with the narrative” of audience expectations, especially when it comes to her sexuality and gender. “I’m fascinated with the interplay between masculinity and femininity, and where we place it and how we use it,” she said. “Because I truly believe we all have both in us — and I think it’s so sexy when we can access both.”
Erivo received a wave of backlash earlier this year when she was cast as Jesus Christ in a Hollywood Bowl production of Jesus Christ Superstar, with some on the religious right calling her casting “blasphemy.” In an interview with Billboard in June, Erivo laughed off the criticism, saying, “you can’t please everyone.”
Elsewhere in her new interview, Erivo got real when speaking about the anti-LGBTQ+ political environment of 2025, saying that “who I love and who you love” have “nothing to do with each other,” and she doesn’t understand why people feel a need to “be involved in people’s business.”
“It is about love. If people really, actually allow themselves to love, actually love, this wouldn’t be happening,” she explained. “We would want everyone to have it, wherever they could get it. Because you’d actually know what it feels like. And so when you know what it feels like, you’d want it for anyone else. Get it however you can get it, please.”
