Cynthia Erivo Does Not Approve of Wicked Fan Art
Want to do some Wicked fan art for your little internet friends? Not on Cynthia Erivo’s watch. Earlier this week, the actress shared her disapproval of an edited version of the film’s poster, which made it hew more closely to the original Broadway art. “This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen,” she wrote on her Instagram Story.
Cynthia Erivo reacts to edits of the ‘Wicked’ poster and the viral AI fighting animation:
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) October 16, 2024
“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.” pic.twitter.com/R7jGz0Nxnx
The edited version of the poster, created by X user @midosommar, covered Erivo’s eyes and made her lips bright red. According to Erivo, this goes against everything she was trying to bring to the image. “I am a real life human being, who chose to look down the barrel of the camera to you, the viewer … because, without words we communicate with our eyes,” she wrote on Instagram. “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.”
Shortly after Erivo’s post, @midosommar took down the edit and responded to her in a tweet. “My initial intent with the poster was not malicious in any way — it was an edit I made in 10 mins to pay homage to the original poster and had no intention of it blowing up like it did,” they wrote. “I deleted the original post out of respect for Cynthia.”
It seems as though @midosommar’s post was just the straw that broke Erivo’s back. In her post, she also railed against “that awful Ai of us fighting” (I laughed, sorry!) and “people posing the question is your ***** green.” Those asterisks, if you are neither a longtime Wicked fan nor someone with an internet-poisoned brain, spell out “pussy.” It’s unclear if Erivo is aware that people are referencing a piece of Wicked-related graffiti that long predates her involvement in the project, but either way, she doesn’t like it!
“None of this is funny … none of it is cute,” she wrote. “It degrades me … It degrades us.” This is, at the end of the day, about artistic integrity, I guess. It’s probably for the best if no one tells Erivo about the Funko Pops, the LEGO sets, or the special-edition Beis luggage collection.
Related