Yahoo Lifestyle Breaking Baz: ‘Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo And Ariana Grande Wow Students In London, Reveal They’ll Be Defying Gravity During Oscar Nominations
Wicked stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande will be in the skies, defying gravity, when Oscar nominations are announced Thursday morning.
Both depart from London in the morning, UK time.
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Erivo, who plays Elphaba in the hit Universal musical movie, says she’ll be en route from London to Park City, where the Sundance Film Festival will honor her with the Visionary Award at its annual gala fundraiser Friday evening. Grande, who plays Glinda, will be headed to Los Angeles.
Both were remarkably Zen on Wednesday in London about not being on the ground to hear nominations, which are being revealed Thursday at 5.45 a.m. PT. They were more into meeting and mingling with students at the National Youth Theatre on the Holloway Road.
Yes, daft jokes were made about whether they’d lost their way and ended up in Holloway instead of Hollywood.
They were at the NYT’s north London headquarters for an “in conversation” event with Paul Roseby, the NYT’s CEO and artistic director.
The auditorium was packed to capacity with students and a few luminaries including television legend Dawn Airey, now NYT’s chair of trustees and chair of the FA Women’s Super League; worth noting that Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium is just up the road, which Airey finds useful.
Gangs of London star Șopé Dirisu, an NYT alumni, was also in the house to watch his friend Erivo.
The National Youth Theatre has become a beloved artistic institution. Its roll-call of former students incudes Helen Mirren, Daniel Craig, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Day-Lewis, Paapa Essiedu, Andrea Riseborough and David Oyelowo.
The Wicked leads dispelled an assumption that there must have been a lot of green screen used in the filming of the movie.
Grande gave a full-throttled laugh and told the audience, pointing to Erivo, “She’s green! She wouldn’t have been seen in it.”
Erivo explained that there were fully realized sets. “We had the Shiz school, Emerald City” and a whole world was created, she said.
“We had a moat, a f*cking moat, as well,” Grande cried.
One high point came when Erivo showed how she used her back to store enough energy to help her breathe when she sang.
She chose a young girl by the name of Darling to help her demonstrate how she could “fill up your lungs and your back.”
Grande rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, the back thing, again.”
It means, said Erivo, “that you can fly and sing at the same time.”
They were such a fabulous double act, and seeing them together in an intimate space was super fun.
Grande is funny in Wicked but in person she’s an absolute hoot, a totally natural comedienne.
“Ari makes me lighter with her laughter, I can be too serious sometimes,” Erivo noted.
“It’s a yin-and-yang thing,” Grande added.
Grande said that after auditioning she did two chemistry reads with “two different actresses, not Cynthia,“ and that she waited so long to hear whether she’d been cast or not “I think it was like, 40 years,” though in reality it was a month and a half.
They promised to return to the Holloway Road for when Wicked: For Good comes out.
After the Wicked gels left, the party continued well into the night.
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