«Wicked» memes have taken a nasty turn following Cynthia Erivo’s poster slam
A now viral fan-edited poster for «Wicked» has triggered a chain reaction, with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande — who play frenemies Elphaba Thropp and Glinda Upland in the upcoming film — positioned at the center of an online firestorm.
While both stars were traveling across the country to promote the film adaptation of the Broadway musical, set to hit screens on November 22, new photos of the movie poster were shared with the public, emulating imagery from the musical that inspired it. However, there were some slight changes that one fan took issue with online — namely, the fact that Elphaba’s eyes were visible and not covered by the brim of her witch’s hat, as in the original Playbill — so they changed it.
With the power of Photoshop, the fan took to TikTok to debut their edit of the poster, with their version pulling the witch hat further down Erivo’s face, covering her eyes. The edit also changed Elphaba’s lip color from green to red and upturned her lips. Safe to say, the edit wasn’t met lightly by Erivo, who lashed out in a post to Instagram, 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.”
Erivo continued, in a now heavily memed line, “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.”
Since Erivo addressed the controversy regarding the fan-edited poster, there’s been a serious uptick in nasty memes about her, pushing back on her statements.
