Cynthia Erivo is feeling hurt and "degraded" by fans who have made alterations to the latest poster released for her movie, Wicked. The film is based on the hit Broadway musical and the new poster features Erivo as the green witch Elphaba and her co-star, Ariana Grande, as fellow witch Glinda, who is whipering in her ear.
Fans moved Grande's hand up and tilted Erivo's hat down to shade her eyes, as well as switching her green lipstick to red with a slight smile, in order to better match the Broadway poster, seen above at right.
"This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen..." Erivo wrote on her Instagram story, at left above. "None of this is funny. None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us."
She continued: “The original poster is an Illustration. I am a real life human being, who chose to 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."
The movie version of the Broadway hit has been divided into two parts, with Wicked releasing November 22, 2024 and Wicked: Part 2 hitting theaters a little over a year later on December 25, 2025. What do you think about the posters above? Tell us in the comment section below. ~Alexandra Heilbron