From Stage to Screen, Cynthia Erivo Is Ready For Her Growing Film Career

Tony, Emmy, and Grammy Award-winning actress Cynthia Erivo, who burst onto West End and Broadway stages in “The Color Purple” walked the red carpet at the 2018 Tony Awards dressed perfectly in a chic, vintage black dress, circa 1937 which she described as “a thrilling find, that I am now in love with.”

There is no rest for the busy Erivo, she is back on set filming John Ridley’s Needle in a Timestack. Up next she is starring opposite Daisy Ridley and David Oyelowo in director Doug Liman’s Chaos Walking and this fall the award-winning actress will appear in Drew Goddard’s Bad Times at the El Royale, which is set in the 1960s in a dilapidated hotel in the Lake Tahoe region of California (October 5) and Steve McQueen’s cinematic drama, Widows starring opposite Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, and Elizabeth Debicki. Set in contemporary Chicago, Widows is set amidst a time of great turmoil and follows the lives of four women with nothing in common except a debt left behind by their dead husbands’ criminal activities. They take fate into their own hands and conspire to forge a future on their own terms. Also on the slate is director Seith Mann’s Harriet, which tells the story of Harriet Tubman, who helped free hundreds of slaves from the South after escaping slavery herself in 1849.

Here is what the chic, award-winning Cynthia Erivo had to share about her burgeoning film career, choosing the perfect dress and why she loves working on stage, and the screen on the red carpet.

On working with director Steve McQueen on the new film Widows: 

“Somehow this film, Widows, has managed to be timely. I think that he got this intuition about what was necessary to see next, and this a movie that concentrates on four women who have to take their lives into their own hands. They are left without their husbands. Some of them have children, some of them have jobs some of them have businesses that they need to run, and they are having to do something to take everything back and take it into their control. And I think it’s a wonderful thing, it’s daring. There is no bluff around it. Were running a heist, and it’s a real thing. We’re picking everything up and throwing things around and you see me boxing. It’s kind of epic to see four women really be physically and mentally strong, in themselves and in their lives. That’s what Widows is.”

On working with award-winning actress Viola Davis on Widows: 

“It was wonderful. She’s generous, amazing, funny, and dynamic. One of the most incredibly talented people that I’ve met in my entire life. I loved working with her. I learned a lot, as well.”

On working on stage vs. film:

“I think what’s different about working on stage is that you have another chance to portray it again. If you don’t get something right on film you can do another take but on stage, once it’s done, it’s done you can’t go back. I think that in my head and I wasn’t use to that so I was trying to get it right the first time — every time. [It’s] nice to know that on film there is more wiggle room, I guess, to get it right.”

And on what’s happening this week… 

“I’m going back to set actually to work on John Ridley’s new film Needle in a Timestack. I’m working with Orlando Bloom, Freida Pinto, and Leslie Odom Jr. It’s exciting because the story follows a husband whose marriage is destroyed by a time-travel rival and will do whatever it takes to get his wife back.”