Vanity Fair Interview Oscar Hopeful, The Super Talented Cynthia Erivo

By Vanity Fair

Below, read a partial transcript of the Cynthia Erivo interview.

There are a million things I could ask you, but I need to start by asking about the Academy luncheon. How was it?

Yeah, it was lovely. It was really lovely. It’s very, very, very relaxed, with everyone speaking and congratulating each other. So it felt nice to be around everyone and looking people in the eye to say, I love your work and congratulations.

Yeah, I saw that you had a moment with Brad Pitt who was wearing a name tag, which I think is so funny. What did you guys talk about?

They give you the name tag at the beginning, and I think he just kept it on.

One thing I was curious about though too is, that luncheon brings everybody together. You’ve been seeing the same people over and over over the course of this circuit. But was there anybody maybe besides Brad that you hadn’t been able to meet before and you were able to meet them at the luncheon?

A few people, really. Kathy Bates I’d met before, Jonathan Pryce was a newbie. But I got to actually have the time to speak to Kathy Bates, because she sent me a really lovely email when I got the nomination. So I was able to see her face to face and say thank you. That was really nice.

I have a question that’s kind of the reverse of that. Who are the people that you’ve been seeing at every single gala and every single ceremony, and maybe you guys didn’t know each other before, but now just by virtue of seeing each other all the time, now you’re friends. Who are those people for you?

It’s probably Renée Zellweger and Scarlett Johansson. And Charlize Theron. Renee and Charlize, we seem to have become fast friends, which is really cool.

That’s really beautiful. Have you guys had sort of like a best actress meeting of the minds?

We’ve been texting and calling and FaceTime, especially with Charlize as well. And Renee and I are texting all the time, we seem to just be like egging each other on and giving each other great encouragement.

Oh I love that. What do you and Charlize FaceTime about? This is a friendship that I did not know about

Everything! So she has dogs, and I have a little dog, and we talk about beautiful daughter and her kids and so human things, really.

This is your first time experiencing the absolute madness and the breadth of the award season. Is it more intense than you thought it would be? How are you enjoying it?

Absolutely. It’s definitely worth it. And I think it’s probably super intense because I’m also filming at the same time as going through it. It’s combining work my work brain with my press brains, or running around and meeting those people and doing loads of things, but then getting back to work and getting into costume and playing a character. So it’s a lot. And I didn’t know that it would be this intense. I also didn’t know that I would be working on something so intense while it was happening, but definitely an experience for sure.

Are you filming the Aretha series?

I am yes.

Exciting. Well I’m gonna definitely gonna circle back to that. But what have been some of the highlights thus far of having Harriet be out and going out and promoting it. What have been the highlights for you this season?

Some of the responses that I’ve gotten from families, I’ve had mothers and daughters reach out saying that they’d gone to see it together and then they’ve decided to have conversations afterwards. I had one message from someone who said he had gone with his grandma, his great-grandma, and his mother. I think his great grandma was 100. The descendants of Harriet, that was an amazing experience. And to open the film at the African-American museum in D.C. It’s been really, really, really wonderful.

Have you done that classic thing of going into a theater, maybe secretly sitting in the back and seeing audience reactions live?

No, not really, but whenever we’ve done Q&As, I always try to go in before the end of the film. Just so I can be in the energy of it and watch the credits roll. But I haven’t snapped into the theater yet.

No, I mean that’s the next best thing. I will say that you did actually do that at a screening last fall when I hosted the chat afterward and you stayed behind and took pictures with truly every single last person that came up to you, which I thought was very admirable.

Thank you. Thank you. Well, you know, people don’t have to give up their time, so the least I can do is chill out and say hello and take photos with those people.

It’s very sweet. I think I have to ask the obligatory question. You have two Oscar nominations this year. Is it true you were on a plane on your way to Japan on Oscar nomination morning?

Yes, that’s exactly true.

Yeah. Where were you going? What was happening?

I was going to Tokyo for a concert. I had a concert there and I was doing three performances. My flight left at midnight, I had fallen asleep and at 6 a.m. I woke up and realized that everyone had already had the announcements and I had no idea what was going on. I had the wifi voucher on the table, I went to my phone, and then all the messages started coming through. After a second or two I realized that I had been nominated.

Was your phone just ringing and buzzing all day that day.

Yeah, very much so. Yeah.

Who are some of the folks who are reaching out to you that day?

Family, friends. Courtney B. Vance reached out to me, Angela Bassett reached out. Kathy Bates reached out obviously as well. I’ve had some really people reach out, obviously my mother and my sister and my friends and all of that,

I love that Kathy Bates is a recurring character in this interview.

I think she’s amazing.

I have to ask too, once you touched down in Tokyo, how did you celebrate? Like what did you do in that moment?

Oh, I went straight to work. I had a press thing to do immediately. So I went to one of the studios, got myself ready after an 11-hour-flight, and put my makeup on, and go out and get things done.

Obviously your nominations are incredible, but I was wondering if it’s bittersweet at all when you learn that you are the sole actor of color to land a nomination this year. How did that feel when you realized that?

A little bit of a bittersweet feeling. You know, I want to celebrate being nominated and being honored in this way. I also understand that there are so many people who also deserve to be celebrated and don’t get the chance to. And I think that we have to find a way to make sure that people aren’t left by the wayside, or not given a chance to shine. I don’t know what can be done, I don’t have a complete answer, but I do think maybe the rules need to change. I don’t know. But it was a bittersweet feeling, because I wish that there were other people of color who could be celebrated too.

You also declined to perform at the BAFTAs because of the lack of diversity. Has the British Academy reached out to you at all and maybe tried to open a dialogue about how things can change or just to touch base with you?

No.

Oh wow. Have you tried to reach out to them?

It’s not my job to reach out to them. If they want some change, they should start reaching out to people and being the change that they seek, but they haven’t got to that.

Well maybe someone is listening. Maybe they’ll realize they should do that. Obviously that was another huge award show that had some serious missed opportunities. Well speaking of performances you are performing at the Oscars, are you excited?

Very excited. Because I think before, before the nominations and before all of that, it was always a dream to perform on the Oscar stage, and to be performing my own song, that was a dream. To be able to do that is amazing. .

Are there any past performances that you maybe watch for inspiration or anything you’ve done for research?

I haven’t watched any past performances, but I have watched performance in general I just want it to feel like a moment. I’ve been talking with people to find a creative route for it, and listening to music and finding inspiration in that. There’s loads of things to pull inspiration from.

I know we’ve been talking about the movie a lot and awards season a lot, but as mentioned previously, you have lots of exciting TV things in the ether. The Outsider is on HBO. It is completely terrifying, but so good. You’re also working on the Aretha miniseries. What can you say about it so far? Where did you actually begin with the research for that

For Aretha, I’m lucky that there’s so much material on her out there. So you can look at interviews, you can read books, you can look at videos of her performing. There’s this amazing documentary, Amazing Grace, which I think is a really beautiful way to find out the way she interacts with the people in her life, whether it be her father, her brother or James Cleveland, who was a really close friend of hers. And the ways she was in the church and what gospel music meant to her and the way she would use her voice. That’s kind of what you start with. And then you look at pictures, you listen to audio, there’s so much material on her. It’s kind of exciting to delve into.

Are you working with like a voice coach at all? To try to get her accent right, like get her singing voice, right? How are you preparing?

I have a vocal coach making sure that we have like some of the affectations in her voice as close as we possibly can. But I don’t have a vocal coach for speech. I have one that I call when I want to check something out, but it’s not so much the accent that is an issue for me.

You were at Clive Davis’s Grammy party and as everybody knows, they were great collaborators. Has he imparted any words of wisdom or have you asked him about Aretha?

I didn’t need to ask him about Aretha. He just gave me all of the information and he’s so excited about the whole thing. He’s been really helpful and making sure that we have the music that we need and he always checks in to make sure that everything’s going well.

Yeah. I love that. In your research, were there any new things that you learned about Aretha that maybe you didn’t know before and now you’re sort of excited to bring that to the fore? Remind people of certain aspects of her life?

I didn’t know about this, but there was a moment where she really was trying to sing jazz, which she can do very well, but it just wasn’t her. She has a lot of jazz music out, which is surreal because that isn’t her genre.