We’re 52 minutes into lunch when Cynthia
Erivo remembers she has to call someone
to sing them “Happy Birthday.”
“I’m the singing friend,” she explains—
a mildly amusing declaration because,
well, have you heard Erivo’s voice? It’s a
soft, clear soprano that can stretch until
it’s a hundred feet tall, even though it
belongs to a ve-foot-one-inch woman
whose own friends occasionally mistake
her for a child. It is as if silk had a sound.
Erivo, 32, formally honed her gift at the
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; after
graduating, she landed a starring role
in the London production of The Color
Purple in 2013. She stuck with the produc-
tion for its Broadway revival, collecting
a Tony, Emmy, and Grammy along the
way. In other words, unless Erivo is only
friends with Beyoncé clones, there’s no
way she couldn’t be the singing friend.
“I’m careful about how I use it; my
voice has given me so much over the
years” she continues, speaking a hair
above a whisper—but not actually whis-
pering, because that can harm the larynx
and Erivo would never do that.
Erivo’s career has come to a boil in
recent years. After landing support-
ing work in the noir Bad Times at the El
Royale and opposite Viola Davis in Steve
McQueen’s Widows, she’s moved into
lead roles in the upcoming HBO series
The Outsider and a sweeping Harriet
Tubman biopic, Harriet.
If you were to play Find the Breakout
Movie Star among this Brooklyn vegan
restaurant’s lunch crowd, you’d land on
Erivo in about a second. She’s wearing
a black denim minidress with a long-
sleeve white shirt tied in front. A black
baker-boy hat caps her snow-blond hair.
The look is generously speckled with
color: chunky orange Nikes, acid green
glasses, bright blue nails. Taken together,
the ensemble doesn’t scream “Look at
me” so much as it posits a matter-of-factquestion: “Why would you look any-
where else?” Then there are the 20 ear
piercings and a oral tattoo on her thigh,
one of dozens covering her midsection.
“I like the mystery of it,” she says, sotto
voce. “I like that nobody knows it’s there
except me.”Erivo grew up in London, in a proud
Nigerian household where Igbo and Pid-
gin bounced o the walls. Her father was
just barely in the picture until he disowned
Erivo when she was 16. Her mother and
younger sister, who are both in the health
eld, have always been supportive of her
creative career; her mother knew her
Cynthia would be a performer because,
as a child, she hummed as she ate.
Erivo’s Hollywood climb was precipi-
tated by The Color Purple. McQueen was
a fan; Harriet producers Gregory Allen
Howard (who also cowrote the script)
and Debra Martin Chase scouted Erivo
during her run as Celie on Broadway.
Harriet is the rst major biopic to be
released in theaters about the abolitionist
who freed hundreds of enslaved people,
led an armed regiment in the Civil War,
and fought for women’s surage. As such,
the lm is burdened with so many expec-
tations that even Erivo’s casting received
backlash. Detractors wondered why a
Brit should play an African American
icon; some skeptics have even gone so
far as to call Erivo’s casting disrespectful.Erivo, who grew up admiring Tubman,
can understand the criticism—“I can’t
say that I’m not surprised”—even if she
didn’t quite see it coming.
Director and cowriter Kasi Lemmons
had an inkling the casting might cause a
stir, but says she saw undeniable upside.
“I thought, Okay, here’s a petite woman
who’s very strong, who can sing, who’s
West African...I found a lot of similari-
ties,” Lemmons says.
Erivo researched Tubman’s life and
employed a dialect coach. Lemmons
loaded her up with material, deter-
mined to create a portrait of Tubman that
included both her heroic deeds and her
less known personal life. The rough cut
of the lm I saw this summer included
sequences depicting Tubman’s parents,
her doomed marriage, and the head
wound that gave her seizures, sleeping
spells, and religious visions. In Erivo’s
hands, Tubman is humble but steely, a
quick and quiet speaker who rises as a
determined, formidable leader.
The experience has made Erivo an
ardent Tubman fan and scholar. Between
bites of her pho bowl and soy nuggets,
she swipes open her phone to show me
Tubman-inspired signet rings and pen-
dants she just purchased from Brooklyn
jewelry designer Sewit Sium. They’re
thick and gold, depicting Tubman sur-
rounded by swirling stars and moons.
It’s not lost on Erivo that Tubman’s
legacy—with its moral clarity and lit-
eral heroics—makes her a ready subject
for such 21st-century iconography and,
regrettably, our current culture wars.
Tubman’s portrait was to appear on a $20
bill redesign announced by the Obama
administration. Trump treasury secretary
Steven Mnuchin delayed it six years, cit-
ing technical di§culties.
“It annoys the hell out of me,” Erivo said.
“I don’t understand how he can do that.”
Erivo is generally frustrated by the
current political climate. She tries, when
she can, to shut Trump out of her mind:
“What he’s doing is not remotely new at
all. It’s just loud.” She is even more criticalW
”
Erivo’s voice
is a clear
soprano that
can
stretch until it’s
a hundred
feet tall; it
is as if silk had
a sound.
INTO THE WOODS
The Tony-, Emmy-,
and Grammy-winning
Erivo will next tackle
the big screen.
Coat by Max Mara;
apron and shorts by Vera
Wang; earrings
by Prada; bracelets
by Dior.114 VANITY FAIR NOVEMBER 2019HAIR BY COREE MORENO; MAKEUP BY CHIHO OMAE; MANICURE BY GINA EDWARDS; TAILOR, MARIA DEL GRECO; SET DESIGN BY SHELLEY BURGON; FOR DETAILS, GO TO VF.COM/CREDITS