Cynthia Erivo felt “very sick” after three-hour “Wicked” audition, was bedridden for four days with a 104-degree fever

On November 17, 2024By Littum

Cynthia Erivo can relate to “Elvis” actor Austin Butler and “Armand” actress Renate Reinsve: It turns out that throwing yourself into a performance can leave you bedridden.

Erivo said during the “Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” that even just trying out for the musical adaptation of “Wicked” made her sick. The audition lasted three hours, and Tony winner Erivo had to recover after it.

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“Oh, I was very sick by the end of it,” Erivo said. “I was in bed for the next week, for about four days, with a 104 fever.”

Erivo plays Elphaba (later known as The Wicked Witch of the West) alongside Ariana Grande’s Glinda. The ensemble film co-stars Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Peter Dinklage, Ethan Slater and Bowen Yang, who also said the production made him sick.

Erivo has previously told New York Times that she was happy that Grande was cast with her. Amanda Seyfried, Dove Cameron and Reneé Rapp had also tried for the role of Glinda.

“Thank God, because it wasn’t the two ladies I auditioned with,” Erivo said, without naming which stars she appeared opposite.

And after wrapping the feature, Erivo said she was “devastated.” Grande agreed, saying, “The whole day was a nightmare. We cried every minute, every hour. We were both in a terrible state for a few days.”

Erivo later told Deadline that she and Grande “connected immediately” on set.

“Our voices really worked together,” Erivo said. “And I think from that moment we’ve built up and it’s been the most fruitful relationship of my life.”

Erivo previously talked about a fan-edited poster for the feature. The actress said the fan-made image was “deeply hurtful” to her and also the “wildest, most offensive thing” ever.

“The original poster is an ILLUSTRATION. I am a real person who chose to look straight down the barrel of the camera for you, the viewer…because without words we communicate with our eyes,” Erivo wrote on his Instagram Stories. “Our poster is a tribute, not an imitation, to edit my face and hide my eyes is to erase me. And it’s just deeply hurtful.”

She continued, “This is the wildest, most offensive thing I’ve seen, similar to the horrible AI of us fighting, equal to people posting the question, ‘Is your p***(y) green?’ None of this is fun. None of it is sweet. It degrades me. It breaks us down.”

Later Erivo told Entertainment tonight that she “probably should have called my friends” to vent instead of making a public statement.

“I’m really protective of the role,” she said. “I’m passionate about it and I know the fans are passionate about it and I think for me it was like a human moment where I wanted to protect little Elphaba and it was like a human moment.”

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