Why Cynthia Erivo Thought She Had No Chance at Elphaba Role in Wicked Film Adaptation

Could Cynthia Erivo become a newly-minted EGOT winner thanks to her performance as Elphaba — aka the young woman destined to be tarred as the "Wicked Witch of the West" — in the upcoming film adaptation of Wicked?

It's a role any actress would kill to land and yet, Erivo (known for playing Holly Gibney in HBO's The Outsider and Celie Harris in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple) thought she never had a shot at the Oz-related gig.

Cynthia Erivo never thought she'd land the lead role in Wicked

Ariana Grande is Glinda and Cynthia Erivo is Elphaba in WICKED, directed by Jon M. Chu. Photo: Universal Pictures

"I didn’t even believe I would be seen," Erivo recently admitted to Vanity Fair. “I was like, 'I don’t think this is going to happen, but I love the idea of watching this musical.' I kept telling my team, ‘Do not give me any information. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know who’s gone in. I don’t want to know what people are being asked to do. I don’t want to know anything about it.'"

Once she got in front of director Jon M. Chu, however, Erivo had nothing to worry about. "She embodied this version of Elphaba that I had never seen,” said the filmmaker behind Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights.

And the rest is history, with Erivo nabbing one of the two lead roles alongside Ariana Grande, who portrays Glinda the Good, erstwhile roommate and best friend to the spell-caster brave enough to challenge the oppressive status quo maintained by the not-so-wonderful Wizard (Jeff Goldblum).

“I’ve always said that Wicked was the love story between two girls,” explained Kristen Chenoweth, who originally played the Glinda to Idina Menzel's Elphaba during the show's original Broadway run. “The three things that I love about it are what I look for in all kinds of art that I do, which is love, forgiveness, and friendship. That’s what Ariana and Cynthia both have, and that’s why they’re going to be a power couple.”