Cynthia Erivo Explains ‘Passionate’ Response Over Edited “Wicked” Photo: ‘I Probably Should Have Called My Friends’

Cynthia Erivo once again addressed a fan’s edits to a Wicked photo she was not a fan of.

Earlier this month, the 37-year-old British actress, who plays Elphaba in the upcoming film, slammed a fan edited image of a promotional image for the movie.

In the original poster, Erivo and co-star Ariana Grande, 31, who plays Glinda, replicate the original Broadway show’s iconic imagery with Erivo’s face fully visible. A fan edited the image to mimic the Broadway poster more closely by adding a shadow over Erivo’s eyes and applying red lipstick on her lips.

Another nefarious edit of the image, including one where Grande is seen asking, “Is your pussy green?” and an AI-generated video of the two women fighting each other, made the rounds online.

“This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen, equal to that awful Ai of us fighting, equal to people posing the question ‘is your ***** green,’” Erivo wrote on her Instagram Story at the time. “None of this is funny. None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us.”

“The original poster is an ILLUSTRATION. I am a real life human being, who chose to look right down the barrel of the camera to you, the viewer ...because, without words we communicate with our eyes,” she continued. “Our poster is an homage not an imitation, to edit my face and hide my eyes is to erase me. And that is just deeply hurtful.”

Erivo appeared at the CFDA Awards in New York on Monday night where she was asked by Entertainment Tonight about the controversial edits at the 1:44 mark in the video linked above. Although she denied her response was “clapback,” the actress insisted that she intended to protect the beloved character.

“I think I'm really protective of the role,” Erivo explained. “I am passionate about it, and I know that the fans are passionate about it. I think for me it was just a human moment of, like, running to protect little Elphaba and that's like a human moment. I probably should have called my friends, but it's fine.”

Elsewhere in the brief interview, Erivo talked about the early Wicked screening she had with the Kardashian family.

“They were really, really sweet and very emotional. Very high feeling people,” she said of the private showing. “They had lots of tears and it was really, really sweet. It was the first time that Ari and I got to watch it together.”

Wicked, adapted from the hit 2003 Broadway musical, serves as a prequel to the events of The Wizard of Oz and tells the supposed untold story of the witches of Oz long before Dorothy dropped in.

Wicked - Part 1 hits theaters on Nov. 3.