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.
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.”
Over the weekend, @midosommar put their version of the poster back on X, writing, “This is, and always was, an innocent fan edit to pay homage to the original Broadway poster, and there’s nothing wrong with that!”
Erivo’s co-star Ariana Grande also weighed in on the debacle, addressing both the poster and the AI video while speaking with Variety at the Academy Museum Gala.
“I think it’s very complicated because I find AI so conflicting and troublesome sometimes, but I think it’s just kind of such a massive adjustment period,” Grande said. “This is something that is so much bigger than us, and the fans are gonna have fun and make their edits.”
Congratulations to the PR team who drafted that answer, it’s great! Deferential to the fans, a healthy skepticism toward AI without fully decrying it — stellar work from the people at NBCUniversal. And congratulations to the fans, who now have Glinda’s permission to make their silly little edits. Next up, I want to see a Dr. Dillamond fancam.
This post has been updated.