Cynthia Erivo: album I Forgive You, recorded amid shooting Wicked, shares ‘not so perfect edges of who I am’

One might ask where Cynthia Erivo finds the time. She spent two years shooting her role as Elphaba in the massive blockbuster Wicked, followed by an extensive global press tour last year. But amid the flights, the filming, the interviews and the awards shows, Erivo somehow managed to record her second studio album, released last week. Erivo admits it scared her to do it, and not because of her busy schedule. Her vision for her first record, 2021’s Ch. 1 Vs. 1, didn’t quite land and “even in its brightest moments, felt a little like they belonged to someone else”. But the music contained on I Forgive You, Erivo says in a heartfelt post on Instagram, is “everything I want it to be and now I’m scared for another reason. For its honesty”. Erivo has long been lauded for her acting and her ability to channel deep emotion and complexity into characters; she earned an Emmy, a Tony and a Grammy for The Color Purple, in which she played Celie, and has been nominated for an Oscar three times. But in this music, Erivo says, she bares her own soul. “I chose to share parts of myself that I would have kept (private),” she says. “The not so perfect edges of who I am. The hurt, the joy, the desire, the loss and the love . . . “The words ‘I forgive you’ are hard to say, to others and ourselves. Maybe, just maybe, this music might help you begin.” Erivo’s penchant for open-heartedness is innate, she says, telling The Glossary that “being vulnerable is how I function”. Raised in Stockwell in South London by parents who immigrated from Nigeria, she shared the story of how at 16, her father disowned her and her younger sister on the platform of a London tube station, saying he wanted nothing more to do with them. By contrast, Erivo is close to her mother, a nurse who separated from their father when they were small, and who has famously said that Erivo was just 18 months old when she first hummed a song; she recorded her prescient suspicion that her daughter would be a performer in her baby book. But it has not been an easy road. Erivo told The Guardian last year that when she enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, they refused to let her take a two-week break for a gig singing back-up vocals for Westlife, which would have been financially life-changing; “the people running the place don’t necessarily understand people who aren’t given everything,” she remembered. When she was exhausted in class from working for a shirtmaker, she felt penalised with smaller roles and ultimately launched her own cabaret, which secured her an agent. Then came the musical theatre parts, including, in 2015, the role in The Color Purple that she felt destined for. That opened the door for her breakthrough to film in 2018, with the heist thriller Widows, opposite Viola Davis, and Bad Times At The El Royale, with Jeff Bridges, Chris Hemsworth and Jon Hamm. A year later, she received double Golden Globe nominations for playing activist Harriet Tubman in the biopic Harriet, and for writing and singing the original song, Stand Up, in the film. In 2022, she was nominated for another Golden Globe for playing Aretha Franklin in the TV anthology series Genius. But even with such huge success on screen, Erivo is loathe to pick just one creative lane. “I would like to think of myself as a renaissance woman,” she said after Genius. “I want to do all the things that allow me to be as creative as I can be. So, I love movies and I want to keep doing movies. I love theatre and I want to be able to do theatre. I love music and I’m going to be making music.” And Erivo continues to make good on that promise. After the release of I Forgive You, the trailer for Wicked: For Good dropped, building anticipation for its release in November, no doubt followed by another press tour with co-star, pop singer Ariana Grande. Their bond is famously close, with reports they have matching tattoos that read “for good” on their palms; Grande told MTV it’s so when they hold hands, the words touch. Grande’s opinion was one of the first Erivo sought when putting together I Forgive You, she told the LA Times. Erivo is also in production on Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Children Of Blood And Bone with Viola Davis and Idris Elba and in August, she’ll be on stage at the Hollywood Bowl, playing Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar, with Queen’s Adam Lambert as Judas. Following Wicked: For Good’s release, she’ll go straight into rehearsals to play all 23 roles in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, when the Sydney Theatre Production premieres at the prestigious Noel Coward Theatre in London’s West End. Just in the past fortnight, along with releasing her album, she performed at World Pride, hosted the Tony Awards, and made the cover of Billboard for her new music. “Just a little busy this summer,” she joked. Indeed. I Forgive You is out now