Cynthia Erivo doesn’t do vision boards; instead, she makes annual lists of the things she wants to achieve. But even she couldn’t have fathomed what a whirlwind the past 12 months would be, between opening the Oscars with Ariana Grande on the heels of their Wicked press run and subsequent awards campaign, to performing at Coachella, hosting the Tony Awards, releasing a studio album and memoir, filming three new movies and hitting the press and awards circuit once more for Wicked: For Good amid rehearsals for her upcoming one-woman stage adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
“At some point, there are things that I could not think of to put on the list that were happening,” Erivo tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Would I have loved to perform at the Hollywood Bowl? Yes, and I did my concert there. Then I was thrown back into the Hollywood Bowl to do Jesus Christ Superstar. Did I see myself playing Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar? Absolutely not,” she admits of two additional feats this past year.
The abundance of offers could be labeled a Wicked windfall, as Erivo’s portrayal of a gravity-defying Elphaba in Jon M. Chu’s 2024 feature, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for best actress — news she learned of while flying to Sundance to receive the Visionary Award this past January — has seemingly translated into opportunities to do the same in real life. “Something happened where it felt like people went, ‘Well, OK then, what do you want to do? What should we try? You’ve been a green woman; you’ve been a witch’— I think even Poker Face had something to do with it — ‘You’ve done 79 different characters in one place, so what else can we do or have you not done?’ ” says Erivo, whose full slate is a testament to her embrace of this moment.
“Some of us, unfortunately, get put in a box and we are defined by the thing that we’ve done once, and now we’re only going to be able to do that one thing,” she adds. “I’ve been really lucky, and I’m extremely grateful that whatever box I’m in — and hopefully I’m not in one — is very expansive and I can stretch and try new things and grow and learn and be whichever character I want to be.”
Being Erivo might be the most demanding role of all. As we talk, the actress initially misremembers what she did and when as the overlap between projects and obligations becomes a blur discussing the horseback riding lessons, combat training and dialect coaching she underwent for her part in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s film adaptation of Tomi Adeyemi’s novel Children of Blood and Bone, set for release January 2027.
“We were doing all of that whilst doing awards season at the same time, and literally the day I had to get to South Africa to start hair, makeup, costume, all of that was the day after the Oscars,” recalls Erivo, whose opening medley with Grande has been at least partially credited for the broadcast’s five-year ratings high. “My flight was in the morning. So, when I say the day after, I mean the night of the Oscars,” she adds. “I had to come home. My nails had to be changed that night because I had embellishments galore all over them, so we had to get it back down to zero, and then I got on a plane that morning; 5:00 a.m. I was in the car off to the airport.”
There was no easing into her new character, Admiral Kaea, when she touched down in Cape Town. “The first day of filming was [Cynthia] on a horse, and her comfort level was like she was born to ride,” says Prince-Bythewood, who sensed Erivo’s dedication to the part even prior to casting.
“The thing that’s so striking, and I got it in our very first phone call, even before she got the role, I was like, ‘This is why she’s great,’ because of the level that she wanted to talk about the character … where she wanted to go with the character and the things that she wanted to know, the things that she had already thought about, the things she wanted to bring and the excitement … she was excited about every single thing.”
Reshoots for Wicked: For Good took Erivo directly to London from South Africa in May — “which was insane, which is why I couldn’t remember it,” she confesses. From London, Erivo then went to New York to begin press for her second studio album, I Forgive You, released on June 6, just two days before she hosted the Tony Awards — which drew its largest viewership in six years — all while doing Samari training for her role in Takashi Doscher’s action thriller Karoshi which was shot in Vancouver, Canada, from June to August.
“It’s sort of kismet,” Erivo says of the album’s release time. “All I knew is that we had Wicked coming, so I figured if we have the album the same year as the movie, it made sense for me. I just didn’t count that Tonys would also be happening the same week.” So did appearances on Good Morning America, The Late Show, The Tonight Show and the Today show concert series. “And we did DC Pride,” Erivo recalls. “Oh my God. What was I doing to myself? DC Pride was the night before the Tonys.”
As hectic as her schedule is, Erivo is rigid about preserving the voice that often leaves audiences in awe, whether heard in theaters, stadiums or on sound stages. “I’m always taking care of it,” says the mezzo soprano who notes she stays in touch with her vocal coaches, Joan Lader and Antea Birchett, the latter of whom she worked with on Wicked, and does warmup exercises before every single show. “I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I’m a crazy person. I don’t eat anything on planes. I bring everything with me: my tea, my water. Someone made a meme of the mug that I carry around because I have it with me everywhere. I have it in several different colors. I will not be without it because I want my tea to always be warm enough to hydrate me,” Erivo adds. “That’s just how I exist. I will do whatever I need to make sure she’s OK — except apparently take a break.”
That diligence with her instrument particularly paid off on I Forgive You’s “Be Okay,” which earned Erivo a Grammy nomination for best arrangement, instrumental or a capella, her fifth overall (she won best musical theater album in 2017 for The Color Purple) and first for a solo project. “I’m really proud of it because it feels like a nomination that recognizes my musicianship, not just me as a singer,” she says. “That song kind of wrote itself. I think I must’ve done it in 20 minutes, and I knew I wanted to write something a capella. I knew I wanted it to feel like a lullaby. I knew I wanted it to feel like something that would lift spirits, but I still wanted the complexity of what harmony can do in something when there’s no music underneath it.”
Erivo’s penchant for complexity also earned her an Emmy nomination for outstanding guest actress in a comedy series for her portrayal of quintuplets known as the Kazinsky sisters in Poker Face.
“It was crazy. It was insane. It was absolutely nonsense, and I would do it again in a heartbeat,” says Cynthia of the undertaking, not realizing the Peacock show was canceled in November after two seasons.
“I’m gutted,” she says when informed. “I thought it was so innovative and fun. It gave each person, each new guest, each character, each actor, a different thing to do. I’d never been given the chance to play something like that before, to do anything of that magnitude, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It’s sad that something like that that presents the opportunity to do something different outside of yourself is going.”
“Singular,” is the word Bradley Cooper uses to describe the talent of Erivo, which he’s seen in many facets since the two became friends, including in a private rehearsal with Gustavo Dudamel at Disney Hall for the L.A. Philharmonic Homecoming concert in 2021. Erivo performed with Dudamel again at Coachella this past April.
“She’s a unicorn,” Cooper says. “The making of Wicked — [my daughter and I] watched everything — her singing on that contraption horizontal. I voted for her for best actress. I know you’re not supposed to say that, but what she was able to evoke by being horizontal against the green screen, singing live, was so insane. No one could do that.”
It could be said that both Wicked and Poker Face were good preparation for Dracula, the forthcoming Kip Williams stage production in which Erivo will play all 23 characters in one performance at the Noël Coward Theatre in London from February to May 2026.
“My head is so full of information,” says Erivo, who chatted with THR just a day before the first full week of rehearsal. “It’s not just the words, it’s just not just the characters, it’s the movement on stage with these characters, and the changes that happen on the stage with these characters. Costume changes are happening in real time in front of you; the character’s becoming another character with a beat where there is no costume change; I’m putting teeth in at the same time.
“There’s so much onstage magic that’s happening that I have to be the captain of,” she adds. “I’m learning at the same time while I’m learning the characters. We’re also doing really beautiful dramaturgical work and figuring out the arc of each character, so it’s not just, I’ll change to this character and then just say the lines. Each of them has their own journey, and it’s about being able to differentiate who is where and how do they connect and whether they converge and do they separate and are they one and the same. There’s so much going on. This is unlike anything I’ve ever done before, and my brain is definitely being stretched to its limit.”
It’s that creative pull that Erivo finds exciting. “If it feels like [an opportunity] might be something that I’m going to have to learn from — this is really scary, this is going to force me to find something else in my character, something else in who I am — then I say yes,” she says. “The problem is a lot of those things are showing up right now, so I’m not saying no very often, but I do say no.”
So far, Dracula and a new film adaptation of Othello, co-starring David Oyelowo, are the only projects on Erivo’s docket heading into 2026, which is more than enough after a fall that included filming the feature adaptation of Prima Facie, for which Erivo stars in the lead role and is also a producer, and releasing her New York Times bestselling memoir, Simply More: A Book for Anyone Who Has Been Told They’re Too Much, in November.
“I managed to sneak a week off to go and do Paris Fashion Week,” Erivo says of her other plans for the new year. “I’ve always had to do one day or two days in that rush off and go do something, but this year I asked to have the full week off to go and be in Paris. That is what I want to do, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
She’ll also be initially occupied by award season, for which Wicked: For Good has drummed up significant buzz, with Erivo already making history as the first Black woman to be nominated twice in the Golden Globe category of best lead actress (comedy or musical). It’s surreal moments like that which have made Erivo slow to craft her next set of conquests. “My mind has been blown several times,” she says of the past year. “To this point, I still haven’t even dared to write the list [for 2026] because at this point, I’m sort of like, ‘What have you got?’ ”
Whatever the universe, or the entertainment industry, has in store, Cooper will be watching. “I’m so excited for her future and what she’s going to do,” he says. “In this business, sometimes you find people that inspire you, and then they’re such lovely human beings. And if they’re like-minded, I find it makes you feel this [sense of] community. This business can be very rough, so when you find somebody that’s supportive and honest about it, too, and you admire them and there’s a mutual respect, it’s a gift.”
