Cynthia Erivo opens up about the backlash that made her step back from Oscar campaigning for ‘Wicked: For Good’

Erivo said commentary targeting her appearance after she shielded Grande from a fan affected her decision to step back from campaigning.

Cynthia Erivo broke down exactly why she stepped back from campaigning for an Oscar for “Wicked: For Good,” and the Singapore incident is at the center of it.

In an interview with Variety published May 27, the Tony Award-winning actress said the “insidious” online backlash that followed her instinctive decision to shield Ariana Grande from a fan who jumped a barricade and attempted to grab Grande at a “Wicked: For Good” premiere event in November 2025 played a direct role in her choice. As theGrio previously reported, SZA called the memes mocking Erivo’s body and appearance “classic misogynoir”, and Erivo was praised when the Cynthia Erivo Singapore attack video went viral, showing her crossing in front of Michelle Yeoh to shield Grande from the intruder. People, citing the Variety interview, reported Erivo’s full account of both the incident and its aftermath.

“Nobody moved. Nobody moved,” Erivo said of the moment, when Johnson Wen, known as Pyjama Man, charged towards Grande during the premiere. “So I moved because my brain went, ‘Get him away! Get him out of here!’ My immediate reaction was ‘Get him away from us.’ And what people couldn’t see is that he wouldn’t let go [of Grande]. He wouldn’t let go. So I just kept pushing at him to get him off.”

What followed was the part that broke something in her. Erivo described being hit with memes and TikTok videos aimed at her physique, her bald head, and what she called assumptions rooted in how people see Black women. “I just felt like my humanity had been bastardized,” she told Variety. “I felt like something I did instinctively had been made to be something that it simply was not because of the way people see women who look like me, and because of the assumptions that are made, and I just didn’t want to be a part of that, really and truly.”

She said the backlash compounded a feeling that the awards push was already weighted against her. “I didn’t want to put myself through it,” Erivo said of the Oscar campaign. “I didn’t feel like I deserved it. It didn’t help.” She added that “there was already a sort of upturned nose at the second installment, even though we all knew there was a second film coming and we were just doing our jobs.”

Despite all of it, Erivo said “Wicked” changed her life. She and Grande still text almost daily. When asked about those who doubted their friendship was real, she was direct: “I think that people didn’t really believe that we were actually friends. But that’s also because people don’t know me very well. If I’m a friend, then I’m a friend. If I’m not, then I’m not.”