Cynthia Erivo Once Ran a Half-Marathon Before Doing 2 Broadway Shows in Same Day: 'Painful but Glorious'

The 'Wicked' actress said her stage performances that night were "painful" but "glorious"

Cynthia Erivo's days on Broadway were exhausting, some more than others.

The Wicked actress, 37, starred in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple as Celie, a role for which she won a Tony in 2016 for best actress in a musical.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times' The Envelope, Erivo was asked to confirm a story "that sounds so nuts": that she ran a half-marathon the same day she had both a matinee and an evening performance of Color Purple.

"I made myself a promise that if I was able to finish this marathon in Brooklyn with enough time to get home and get myself ready, I'd do it," Erivo said. "I finished it in an hour, 37 minutes."

Related: Cynthia Erivo Reveals the Surprising Reason She Wears Prosthetics in Wicked: 'Those Aren't My Ears!'

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Each show ran for roughly two-and-a-half hours. Erivo said that night's performances after completing the 13.1-mile race were "painful ... but glorious."

"The first thing I do in the show is get down on my knees," she recalled. "And after you've been running that amount and you've never done it before, your body is like, 'What the heck is going on?' "

The star also shared in the Envelope interview the lengths she goes to preserve her voice. "I think about it daily. I’ve been using it for such a long time and she — I call her 'she' — has been really good to me."

"She doesn’t have a name. But she’s temperamental," Erivo continued of her voice, adding, "I lie. She’s not temperamental, but she’ll tell me when she needs something. I’m a stickler for taking care of her. I always have water with me. I always have tea with me. There’s always a lozenge in my bag, just in case. And if it’s time to be quiet, it’s time to be quiet."

Erivo stars as Elphaba opposite Ariana Grande as Glinda in the film adaptation of the Broadway show Wicked, in theaters Nov. 22.

The Oscar nominee recently said her audition for Wicked was about three hours long and left her "ill" afterward. "Oh, I was very ill by the end of it," she said on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. "I was in bed for the next week, for like four days, with a 104 fever."