Cynthia Erivo says she feels degraded after fan edits of a Wicked promotional image circulated online.
The 37-year-old British actress plays Elphaba in the upcoming film adaptation of the long-running Broadway musical, opposite Ariana Grande, 31, who plays the role of Glinda.
Wicked, which serves as a prequel to the events of The Wizard of Oz, tells the supposed untold story of the witches of Oz long before Dorothy dropped in. The Broadway musical’s now-iconic poster, which has been the show’s key art since its premiere in 2003, features an illustration of Elphaba grinning while donning a black hat that covers her eyes as Glinda whispers into her ear.
With the film beginning to share new promotional photos ahead of its November opening, it seems that one fan took it upon themselves to edit an image of Erivo and Grande paying homage to the Broadway poster to make it look closer to the original and adding a shadow to cover Erivo’s eyes.
However, other nefarious edits of the image, such as one depicting Grande asking, “Is your pussy green?” and an AI-generated video of the women fighting each other, have been making the rounds online.
Erivo called on the alterations on her Instagram Story on Wednesday morning, writing, “This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen, equal to that awful Ai of us fighting, equal to people posing the question ‘is your ***** green.’”
“None of this is funny. None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us,” she added.
“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 continued. “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.”
“Let me put this right here, to remind you and cleanse your palette,” the Tony winner wrote while sharing the original photo.
As pointed out by some fans of the Broadway musical, the “Is your pussy green?” meme apparently started online long before the film was in development. A poster for the musical, vandalized with the crude question, seemingly went viral in May 2014.
Wicked – Part 1 hits theaters on Nov. 3.
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