Cynthia Erivo

Cynthia Erivo is a bisexual British actress and singer who publicly spoke about her LGBTQ+ identity in a 2022 British Vogue interview, saying that LGBTQ+ people "love differently and express ourselves differently" — a quiet but meaningful claim of membership in the community — and she has since spoken with increasing openness about her queerness and its relationship to how she inhabits the characters she plays. Erivo is one of the most decorated performers of her generation: she won the 2016 Tony Award for originating Celie in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple, received Academy Award nominations for both her performance and her original song in Harriet (2019), and starred as Elphaba opposite Ariana Grande in the blockbuster Wicked (2024) and its conclusion Wicked: For Good (2025). Her portrayal of Elphaba — an outsider who refuses to be diminished — was widely read by queer audiences as a profoundly resonant LGBTQ+ narrative. Erivo has spoken about her belief that artists from marginalized communities bring irreplaceable depth to stories about belonging and transformation.