How the Star of 'Wicked' Just Sabotaged Her Own Movie

Cynthia Erivo's bizarre reaction to a fan's poster continues Hollywood's streak of lead actors sabotaging their own films with self-importance and manufactured grievances.

Readers might be surprised to learn that one of my favorite things to do in the whole world is going to the theater—and I’m talking the stage, not the movies.

Watching a live performance of great play or musical is, for me, the pinnacle of entertainment; and one of my favorites is Wicked, a musical I’ve seen performed live three times. When my wife first dragged me to the musical nearly 15 years ago, I had low expectations. To my surprise, I loved it. The story is brilliant, and the music and acting were so moving that I might have cried just a little. (Plays, musicals, movies, and songs hit me in weird ways.)

So when I learned a few days ago that a movie of Wicked was slated for release, I was tentatively excited.

Alas, my optimism turned to ashes after watching the latest episode from The Critical Drinker, a hilarious YouTube reviewer who analyses entertainment, especially movies.

Apparently the star of Wicked, Cynthia Erivo, is outraged that someone online edited one of the posters (see below) to hide her eyes so that it matched the original posters of the Broadway hit.

In response to the edit, Erivo had this to say:

"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. 

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.

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.”

To say this is an overreaction is an understatement. As the Drinker persuasively pointed out, there are sound artistic reasons for removing Elphaba’s eyes from the poster that had nothing to do with oppression or “erasing” real people.

And even if one disagrees with the choice, Erivo’s claim that a fan’s artistic tweak to a poster “erases” her is patently ridiculous. Yet it fits a pattern we’ve seen in recent history involving privileged Hollywood actresses—from Brie Larson to Jennifer Lawrence to Rachel Zegler and beyond—alleging they are oppressed victims subjugated by some sinister force.

Readers may recall that Zegler’s odd diatribes created such a mess for Disney that the company last year decided to delay the film until 2025 to avert a “financial disaster.”

What explains the pattern of Hollywood leading ladies tanking their own films? The Drinker thinks he knows.

“All of them bought into their own hype just a little too much,” he says, “allowed their egos to get just a little too big.”

The Drinker isn’t wrong that ego played a role, but it’s important to understand that ego isn’t the only factor at work here.

As I’ve explained in the past, neo-Marxists failed at economics; but they succeeded in taking Marxism mainstream through intersectionality, a framework that explores how social identities and systems create groups in society that are either “privileged” or “oppressed.”

Intersectionality thrived in universities, where students were taught to to see all social relationships through the lens of power, conflict, and oppression. But instead of the labor class versus the bourgeoisie, “it was the patriarchy versus women, the racially privileged versus the marginalized, etc.”

In other words, as economist Richard M. Ebeling has explained, Marxists replaced class struggle with race and gender struggle.

“Just as the old Marxists used to call upon all workers of the world to unite against their capitalist chains regardless of their particular ethnic, linguistic, or national backgrounds, so, too, the new race and gender collectivists insist that all victims of all forms and permutations of white, male ‘privilege’ must stand united as one force of resistance and liberation.”

Now, I’m not saying Erivo is a Marxist. Nor am I saying that racial or sexual inequality never existed. What I am saying is that we’ve created a culture in which people see themselves more and more in terms of identity.

This is a shame for a lot of different reasons. A relatively minor one is that it makes it difficult to watch movies when powerful people see themselves as marginalized and oppressed for fictious reasons.

That Erivo chose to respond to a fan’s innocent artwork with bitterness instead of a shoulder shrug or even a small word of praise for the artist continues the long streak of Hollywood leads who sabotage their own films with their own self-importance and imagined grievances.

Time will tell if Wicked suffers the same fate as Snow White.