{"id":76817,"date":"2016-06-03T03:47:32","date_gmt":"2016-06-03T07:47:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=76817"},"modified":"2016-06-03T03:47:32","modified_gmt":"2016-06-03T07:47:32","slug":"meet-tony-award-nominee-cynthia-erivo-force-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2016\/06\/03\/meet-tony-award-nominee-cynthia-erivo-force-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Tony Award nominee Cynthia Erivo, ‘a force of nature’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\u201cAn<\/a>
\u201cAn artist like Cynthia comes around a couple times in a lifetime. It’s just that remarkable. And she wasn’t on any of our radar. It almost makes it more delicious,” said said Scott Sanders, The Color Purple’s lead producer said. (Photo: Cynthia Erivo\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK\u2014Actors are rarely like their characters, but few actors these days are as far apart from them as Cynthia Erivo.<\/p>\n

The English actress plays Celie in the revival of \u201cThe Color Purple\u201d on Broadway, and she’s as different as can be from the passive, dominated and self-effacing character she plays onstage.<\/p>\n

Erivo is a ball of confident energy, a self-described \u201cfitness fiend\u201d with the buff arms to prove it. She once ran a half-marathon only a few hours before starring in the first of the day’s two shows.<\/p>\n

Sit idle as her woes mount? Not Erivo. So she has to hide it onstage.<\/p>\n

\u201cInside of her, Cynthia is going, ‘Come on! Why are we still waiting? Why are we still not leaving?\u201d’ said the actress. \u201cI have to put Cynthia to the side and realize that these two people are not the same person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her measured performance aging 8 to 50\u2014as well as a voice that lifts the roof off the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre\u2014has earned the actress\u2014who few Americans knew a year ago\u2014a Tony Award nomination on her Broadway debut. It’s a performance so good you could forget that Jennifer Hudson was also onstage.<\/p>\n

\u201cCynthia Erivo is a force of nature,\u201d said Scott Sanders, the lead producer. \u201cAn artist like Cynthia comes around a couple times in a lifetime. It’s just that remarkable. And she wasn’t on any of our radar. It almost makes it more delicious.\u201d<\/p>\n

The musical is a stage version of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel set in rural Georgia that covers a lifetime of events observed by Celie, a homely, uneducated farm woman whose dreams are repeatedly shattered by the cruelty of men until she stands up for herself at the end. It’s the part Whoopi Goldberg played in the film.<\/p>\n

It’s Erivo’s second bite of the apple, having starred in the Menier Chocolate Factory production of the show in London in 2013. She said she dug deeper this time to bring Celie as a full person with flaws to Broadway.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to make it clear that she is a survivor first and she’s a fighter first. She just has a different way of doing it,\u201d she said. \u201cI don’t think she feels sorry for herself in the slightest. Not that I did that the first time, but I think I’m more confident about that this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Erivo, a 2010 graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, said she discovered at age 5 that she could make people happy just by singing. People would smile when she hummed.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as I was concerned, whatever I was doing was making people happy. By making people happy, it made me feel happy. So I knew that I wanted to continue feeling like that and making other people feel like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

A bookworm who loves science, Erivo wanted to be a spinal surgeon and later studied music psychology, hoping to help people through music. Eventually, she was steered toward theatre.<\/p>\n

Her first big break came in a production of \u201cThe Umbrellas of Cherbourg\u201d followed by the lead role in the U.K. tour of \u201cSister Act.\u201d That’s the second former Whoopi Goldberg role Erivo has tackled and it’s no coincidence: the younger actress is a long-time fan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw on-screen this woman who was unafraid of taking the bull by the horns and really going for these really cool roles, fully and truthfully,\u201d she said. \u201cI was just inspired by that and, for some reason, they keep coming at me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Erivo loves to go to restaurants and does yoga every week. She listens to a wide range of music, from British new wave to American soul.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are days when I’m completely obsessed with Kate Bush and there are days when I’m completely obsessed with the Eurythmics. Then it’s Aretha Franklin, then it’s Lena Horne, then it’s Ella Fitzgerald, then it’s John Legend, then it’s Michael Jackson,\u201d she said. \u201cMusic to me is like food so I feel like whatever I need that day I can get from a song.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK\u2014Actors are rarely like their characters, but few actors these days are as far apart from them as Cynthia …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":76818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106],"tags":[4209,11033,11035,11034],"class_list":["post-76817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","tag-broadway","tag-cynthia-erivo","tag-the-color-purple","tag-tony-award","mauthors-mark-kennedy","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}