Cynthia Erivo Shares Colorful New ‘Wicked’ Clip on ‘Fallon’

Cynthia Erivo stopped by The Tonight Show to discuss the pressures and pleasures of taking on the role of Elphaba in the upcoming film adaptation of Evil. At the end of her chat with host Jimmy Fallon, Erivo shared a never-before-seen clip from the film that teases her performance of the beloved musical number “The Wizard and I.”

Fallon also convinced Erivo to preview her rendition of “Defying Gravity,” the Broadway musical’s most memorable song. The actress admitted that she ended up doing the song “a little differently” from how the track was written. “I studied it,” she admitted. “When I first auditioned, that’s what I did. I did it as written.”

She added that the audition was “crazy” and lasted three hours. “I was very sick by the end of it,” she told Fallon. “I was in bed the next week, for about four days with a 104 fever. It was the craziest weekend because I had sung at Disney Hall the night before.”

Erivo said she did not audition with co-star Ariana Grande and did not know the singer was up for the role of Galinda until the casting was confirmed. “We had never met,” Erivo said, adding that it felt like “instant chemistry.” “It was really easy,” she said of their relationship. “She was lovely.”

Elsewhere on the late-night show, Fallon enlisted Erivo to play his “Musical Genre Challenge,” which involved her turning “The Sound of Music” into R&B pop and Dream Girls’ “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going ” for opera.

First part of Evil is slated to hit theaters on November 22, with part two arriving on November 21, 2025. The soundtracks for both halves of the film will be released simultaneously. The film was directed by Jon M. Chu and also stars Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum, Bowen Yang and Peter Dinklage.