Wicked’s Elphaba Has Always Been Black. Cynthia Erivo’s Stunning Performance Cements It

Elphaba is green. It’s the first thing Glinda says to her in Wicked, the Jon M. Chu-directed blockbuster movie-musical adaptation of Stephen Schwartz’s Broadway classic. The fact that Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo) is green is as paramount to Wicked’s plot as Galinda Upland’s (Ariana Grande) glamor and popularity. Because she is green, Elphaba is bullied relentlessly, abandoned by her own father, and ostracized from all of Oz. She’s an outsider: unpretty, unappreciated and unpopular. It’s a position anyone who’s ever been in spaces with people who don’t look like them can relate to. And yet, while it may be controversial to say, to me, Elphaba has always been Black. When I first saw the musical in Toronto many years ago, the recognition hit me as hard as Glinda hitting on Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey). Of course, Elphaba, with her nonconformist activist spirit, resilience, strength in the face of insurmountable challenges and a less-talented blonde girl trying to steal her shine, was Black-girl coded. What else would she be? And yet, in the 30-year history of Wicked, Elphaba had only been played by one Black woman (Alexia Khadime) full-time in a professional production of the musical before Erivo. 

Khadime played Elphaba from 2008 to 2010 on London’s West End. “A lot of racism came with that because I was a Black girl playing the role that was predominantly played by a white girl,” she told Marie Claire in 2020. “There were definitely people who made comments that I was taking away the white roles. At the time I played Elphaba, Obama was president. Then the comments were, ‘Just because we’ve got a Black president doesn’t mean we have to have a Black Elphaba.’”

Now, over a decade later on the big screen, Elphaba has micro braids and Cynthia Erivo’s face so the character’s greenness is undeniably informed by her Blackness. Not only did Erivo make the connection on purpose, she is openly discussing it so there is no confusion. “The braids were something that I really wanted from the very, very beginning, because I knew that I wanted to make sure that I was infused in this woman who was also green,” Erivo told Unbothered’s Jessika Hardy earlier this month in LA about how her identity informed her portrayal of one of the most infamous witches in pop culture history. “I didn't want to erase everything about myself.” 

If you told me Erivo was just reciting a deleted scene from Wicked with that line, I would believe you. Because refusing to erase everything about herself is one of the core tenets of Elphaba’s personality. From the moment she steps foot in Shiz University proclaiming with confidence that yes, she's green, she’s not seasick, no, she didn't eat grass as a child and she's always been green, Elphaba is disallowing her own erasure. “I really love those lines, because it immediately takes the ownership of who she is and what she is, and there's a sort of bravery to it, even though there's that vulnerability of making the joke before anyone else makes the joke,” Erivo said. “But to finish it with, ‘and yes, I've been green my whole life’ owns it all, and I think that's something that I've learned to do over time, to really own all of who I am, and that not just what I look like, but what I am, my queerness — all of those things combined that make me who I am. And I think that quiet confidence that she has is something that I really wanted her to have. She has pride in who she is.” 

The fact that Elphaba is proud of her skin is radical in the world of Oz and essential to the overall (yet sometimes heavyhanded; hey it’s a musical) message of Wicked: that power should be questioned, villainized women of color are usually right, and being different is badass, actually. Elphaba’s pride is tied up in the confidence she isn’t supposed to have, and it’s why she’s able to [spoiler] stand up to the wizard (Jeff Goldblum) when the time comes. Elphaba’s choice to oppose and expose the wizard comes from a place of self-assurance and stands in stark contrast to the insecurity she displays a few scenes earlier during “I’m Not That Girl” when she’s doubting that a guy like Fiyero (Bailey is so swoon-worthy, charming, and hot in this role, I can’t talk about him without being inappropriate) could ever love her. “She who's winsome/ she wins him/ Gold hair with a gentle curl/ That's the girl he chose/ And Heaven knows/ I'm not that girl.” This scene destroyed me — not just because I was transported right back to elementary school when I had a crush on a boy who preferred blondes— but because I know in so many scenarios, including the industry Erivo has to navigate, Black women are sold the lie that we aren’t “that girl”, that white women “win” by default and that “wishing only wounds the heart.” Through her Elphaba—tough yet soft, defensive yet empathetic, uncertain yet resolute— Erivo delivers a layered complexity to the Wicked Witch of the West and, ultimately, transforms a villain into the hero Black girls need. 

“I think I've had some time to reckon with the skin I'm in, and to be comfortable walking into a room and being the only one; people looking at me and not necessarily seeing beauty, but having to find that for myself and accept all of the things I am, find my own beauty and be able to call myself beautiful, regardless of what other people think,” Erivo continued to Unbothered. “What I wanted for Elphaba was that when she walks into a room, the skin she's in is not new to her. It's something that she's lived with her whole entire life, and so there has to be a confidence otherwise she would never leave the house. I felt like, why would she not be confident in what she looks like if it's what she knows every single day?”

It’s this kind of thoughtfulness that’s on full display in Erivo’s performance. From Elphaba’s freckles to her eye color, to the slow-build of her vocal journey in the film, every detail is at once an homage to the source material (from Frank L. Baum's children's book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, to the 1939 classic film, The Wizard of Oz, to Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel to Broadway) to something that’s entirely of Erivo’s own making. There’s an argument for leaving IP as recognizable as Wicked alone. It’s easy to say it should have stayed on the stage. But then we wouldn’t have the subtlety of Erivo’s mannerisms, her thrilling physical choices that ground Elphaba as a fully-formed person with flaws and trauma and hopes and dreams. We wouldn’t have her renditions of “The Wizard And I” and “Defying Gravity” which both made me burst into tears. 

Before Wicked, I knew Cynthia Erivo was a star. I’ve seen Widows and that Tony Award performance of “I’m Here” from The Color Purple (you know the one). After Wicked, I know that she is so talented she can break me with nothing more than a key change and a chin quiver. In the final moments of Wicked, its broader social and political commentary comes into focus. The wizard is outed as a fraud (both Goldblum and Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible play these scenes with the pitch-perfect precision that comes only with their experience) who is trying to use Elphaba’s powers to oppress animals (who are walking, talking, law-abiding citizens in Oz). She pushes back against the naked emperor of Emerald City and refuses to do his bidding. Her supposed best friend Glinda folds immediately, and like the 55% of white women who voted for Trump, she chose her own selfish interests over what was good and right — and over supporting a woman of color. It wasn’t hard to draw a straight line between Wicked’s allegory and the current political climate in which a raging lying dictator is manipulating people into following his dissent into tyrannical control and plans of mass subjugation. But where the film could have veered into corny over-the-top territory, it’s Erivo who steadies the proverbial flying broom, grounding the story back to Oz and back to Elphaba, a girl who is just trying to do good. 

“I think goodness is trying to discover the things that you know will help others, not just yourself,” Erivo said. “Sometimes doing the good thing is often doing the hard thing, and you kind of have to reckon with that and be brave enough to do the hard thing, which I think actually Glinda does in that Oz [during the] ballroom moment. It’s the moment where Glinda goes, ‘Oh, I can't just be silent. I can't just do nothing. I actually have to face and take the challenge of this person who's showing her vulnerability, and then she comes and joins her.” The moment Erivo is referring to happens after Glinda sets Elphaba up to be ridiculed at a party but instead joins in on Elphaba’s quirky dancing, diffusing the situation and staving off bullies. Grande is exquisite in the scene (her comedic timing is on point throughout the film) and it acts as a stunning juxtaposition of the ending, when Glinda lets her silence consume her and does nothing. “And I think with Elphaba, she's always doing the hard thing, so she always ends up speaking up when no one else will speak up, and she always, sometimes says the wrong thing, but it's not for want of not being good,” Erivo said.

She ends up speaking up when no one else will. Sound familiar? Elphaba is Black because a Black woman is playing her in this instance, but also because she’s the one who puts herself on the line to save others, who is judged unfairly for it, who is villainized for no good reason, and who isn’t allowed to “fly off the handle” lest she be banished and persecuted. 

“Anyone who is of an ethnic minority, who is Black or Jewish or gay, or a woman feeling she grew up in a man’s world, or anyone who grew up feeling a dissonance between who they are inside and the world around them, will identify with Elphaba,” Broadway creator Schwartz said in Carol de Giere’s biography. “Since that’s so many of us, I think there will be many of us who will.”

Black women and girls will no doubt identify with this Wicked’s Elphaba. We’ve been seeing ourselves in this character for 30 years. And now, with Erivo’s intentionality, her masterful performance, and her micro braids, Elphaba gets to be ours, officially.