Cynthia Erivo slams scrutiny over Ariana Grande friendship, blasts critics for being ‘psychologists from their couches’

Key Points

• Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo explained difficulties publicly navigating her close friendship with Wicked costar Ariana Grande.
• Erivo slammed scrutiny over the pair being “two women” who “could actually be friends.”
• She elaborated on why it felt like a “double-edged sword” each time the pair stepped out together for press.

Every friendship deserves a chance to fly — including the intense bond shared between Wicked stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.

After the pair’s public affection for one another generated criticism while they promoted both Wicked films in 2024 and 2025, Erivo is now reacting to the public scrutiny the duo endured.

“It was interesting that there were many people who had become psychologists from their couches,” Erivo told The Guardian in an interview tied to her upcoming legal drama, Prima Facie.

Erivo classified the blowback as a “weird” form of “annoyance” on behalf of certain sects online. She attributes it to discomfort over “the fact that two women could actually be friends. Like, why are they friends? Why are they connected? There must be something wrong with them.”

Channeling the critical sentiment, she then rhetorically asked, “Why are they showing emotion? How dare they cry? And how dare they laugh? And how dare they be emotive and alive?”

The 39-year-old called navigating publicity for the films a “double-edged sword,” because “if we were dead behind the eyes and showing no emotion, there would have been something else to say about it. I wish there was someone who could have been like, ‘Right, this is the proper balance of emotion that you should show. Don’t show this. Don’t show that. Just this amount.'”

Amid the pair’s frequently viral interactions together on the Wicked promotional circuit — most famously, the “holding space” interview that became a meme), additional reactions came as a surprise to Erivo, including the moment she defended Grande from an approaching man who crashed the Wicked: For Good premiere.

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Many joked that Erivo had become a “bodyguard” for Grande in the moment — a classification the Harriet actress didn’t appreciate, and said that reactions went “too far” for her liking.

“I was like: ‘Oh, you think because I look like this that you could talk to me this way about something that was a human thing that I would have done for any friend, and hopefully a friend would have done for me, but I must be a bodyguard,” Erivo observed. “I think the idea that it’s okay to rip a person to shreds in that way when they’re doing something that’s a naturally human thing to do just felt crazy.”

Though Erivo still has lingering frustrations over the way certain members of the public received her friendship with Grande, the pair drove both Wicked films to titanic success on both the awards trail and at the box office. The films earned a combined $1.3 billion at the global box office, while Erivo and Grande received Oscar nominations for their work in the first movie.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly