Actress Cynthia Erivo, star of the upcoming live action adaptation of Wicked, is blasting fans who recreated a poster for the film by repositioning her witch hat and darkened it, covering the top portion of her face.
Calling it “the wildest, most offensive thing” and “deeply hurtful,” Erivo slammed fans for the poster.
The original graphics for Wicked going back to the stage show which debuted on Broadway in 2003 features a witch with a green face and red lipstick with her pointy witch hat pulled down to the bridge of her nose, thereby hiding her eyes. Next to her, a white witch in profile whispers into the green witch’s ear. The white witch’s face is also mostly covered in the original poster.
However, the new poster for Universal’s Jon M. Chu-directed film shows Erivo looking square into the camera with her whole face visible.
Fans, though, refashioned the new poster to look more in line with the graphic branding that has been part of Wicked since the beginning by repositioning Erivo’s hat down over her eyes and giving her red lipstick in place of the green lipstick seen on the new poster. The fan poster also moved the hand of the white witch up to hide her face more, like the original posters for the stage show.
Ervio, though was incensed by the fan effort to make the new poster resemble the original branding.
“The original poster is an ILLUSTRATION. I am a real life human being who chose to look right down the barrel of the camera to you, the viewer… because, without words we communicate with our eyes,” Erivo railed on her Instagram stories. “Our poster is an homage not an imitation, to edit my face and hide my eyes is to erase me. And that is just deeply hurtful.”
“This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen, equal to that awful AI of us fighting, equal to people posting the question, ‘is your pussy green.’” None of this is funny. None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us,” the British actress added.
Ervio followed that up by posting the image for the upcoming film, and added, “Let me put this right here, to remind you and cleanse your palette.”
Wicked is set to be released on the U.S. on November 22. The film also stars Ariana Grande, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode, Bowen Yang, Bronwyn James, Keala Settle and Peter Dinklage.
Despite Eviro’s outrage, many feel the actress is being absurd in her criticism.
“It’s not an easement it’s an homage the original Broadway Wicked poster. This perpetual victim mentality needs to stop,” one X user wrote.
X user Andy Signore thought that Eviro was being an “insufferable idiot” with her attack on the fan-made poster.
Robert Brendan felt that Eviro’s reaction was “ludicrous.”
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