At the Tony Awards in June, the past and future of “Wicked” were in the spotlight, with Idina Menzel and Cynthia Erivo — the Elphabas of stage and screen, respectively — presenting the night’s best new musical award to “The Outsiders.”
One of those statuettes went to Angelina Jolie, who, with her daughter Vivienne, was among the producers of the Broadway adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s classic 1967 novel.
“I know how excited everybody was that you presented the Tony,” Jolie says to Erivo during their Actors on Actors conversation, calling Erivo’s part in the ceremony “the cherry on top, that it would be from you.”
Excitement from team “Outsiders” certainly makes sense: For playing Celie in the 2015 Broadway revival of the musical “The Color Purple,” Erivo won a Tony, a Grammy and an Emmy, putting her, in one swoop, just an Oscar short of vaunted EGOT status.
Today, though, Jolie and Erivo have gathered not to discuss Broadway, but to delve into their recent film roles. Jolie’s “Maria” begins on the day of opera diva Maria Callas’ death, then rewinds to her final days — with flashbacks to her career triumphs, heartbreaks and childhood of trauma. Jolie could relate to Maria, having “lost my voice,” she says, speaking metaphorically, and then adding, “Maybe when I lost my mother, maybe when someone hurt me.” To master the role in the Pablo Larraín film, therefore, Jolie trained for seven months, and “it was like a therapy.”
To get inside Elphaba’s skin for “Wicked,” each day Erivo had to undergo a green transformation that would take, she says, up to four hours, which was on top of taking care of her vocal cords afterward. “It doesn’t matter how accomplished a singer you are. You have to find the time to repair,” Erivo says.
At the end of their talk, the two performers set their eyes toward the future. “I hope we get to work together,” Jolie says. “Let’s find something!”
CYNTHIA ERIVO: When I watched “Maria,” I wanted to find out what brought you to the project.
ANGELINA JOLIE: Well, I had wanted to work with Pablo Larraín for a long time. I think he’s a wonderful director that is very thoughtful about his subject and his work. And he’s very sensitive to behavior in actors, but also able to shoot a film — and you sometimes sacrifice one for the other. He called me about “Maria,” and I said, “You have to give me a few days.” I knew of her a little bit, but I watched a lot of her work. Then I also watched a lot of her interviews.
JOLIE: I’m sure you understand her even in ways I don’t, as singing has been a part of your life since you were little. And you’re so unbelievably talented. It’s a lifetime commitment; it’s all the work that’s not seen and not understood. And in many ways you were born very talented. But really for me to now understand what it takes … I have so, so much respect for you and your work.
ERIVO: Thank you.
ERIVO: Yeah, I remember that.
JOLIE: And there’s a truth to that. For Broadway, it’s not a film — every night’s different. Every moment’s different. There’s a danger, there’s a surprise, there’s a life. I feel that you were able to keep that. When I watched this work that you did in “Wicked,” it’s bigger than life, but it felt very honest. Your work was just exquisite and humble, and I felt somehow you just pulled me in past all of that.
ERIVO: Thank you very much for saying that. With “Maria,” in her everyday life, there’s this wonderful fearless way of she never feels sorry for herself …
JOLIE: Thank you for noticing that.
ERIVO: … ever. I think that’s what breaks your heart, because she’s fighting still. We don’t get that very often in our women characters, in these bigger-than-life women. We want them to falter a little.
JOLIE: They’re a good woman if they’re apologizing. Or if they’re breaking. Maria didn’t have a mother that loved her and told her that she was enough as she was, so both of our characters come from this being alone since they were little and feeling a little different for very different reasons.
ERIVO: And never expecting that anyone would give …
JOLIE: … love.
ERIVO: There’s this wonderful comparison of understanding the loneliness that they both have to experience. Because of that, they somehow have a really big capacity to love. So when it comes to them, they’re really open to it.
JOLIE: Yes. I think it’s true for a lot of strong women. There’s an idea that we don’t want care and kindness and softness and love, and it is so much the opposite.
ERIVO: Can I ask, how long were you filming this piece?
JOLIE: I was in training for about seven months, and then we filmed … maybe it was three months?
ERIVO: Wow.
JOLIE: Yeah. And we sang live on set.
ERIVO: There is something quite thrilling about getting to do that on a set.
JOLIE: For you, I’m sure it’s thrilling because you know how good your voice is. For me, more terrifying than thrilling. When I first sang, I asked it to be the tiniest room. Like, “whoever needs to be here, please close the doors.” By the end, I got used to making big sound in a room full of many, many people. But, yeah, there’s quite a feeling.
ERIVO: You said that you were terrified. Do you think that feeling is eased now?
JOLIE: I feel so many emotions when it comes to this piece, because I had someone in my life say that I couldn’t sing. They didn’t even say, “You couldn’t sing.” I was singing something little, and they laughed a little bit at me. And it really locked me. I don’t think I would’ve ever tried had this not come; I would’ve just lived my whole life never finding my voice. So, yes, I went from being very terrified to being very grateful.
I can’t not talk about some of the joy of this film that you’ve made. I remember taking my daughter — a few of my children, but my one daughter — who, when she watched “Defying Gravity,” I remember that moment. Because as a mom, we want art to have an influence. I felt that feeling of “Oh, she needs this — she’s feeling this desire to know that there’s endless possibility and something within her she hasn’t discovered yet.” This was how I was feeling about it in that moment. I loved seeing it live. I loved, loved when it came at the end of this film. That particular song or what it means to you — singing it — anything that you can share?
ERIVO: There was this huge responsibility, because it’s such a well-known song. And people know it; people love it. I really wanted to mean it. The physical work of it was hard, because I’m in a harness: I’m flying and I’m singing at the same time — so many things are happening. That was new for me, to figure out how my body, my brain, my voice, would all come together to work as one. I felt really proud of being able to figure that physical, practical side of it.
But I think in order to get to a point where I could rule the words, I really thought of all of the journey of getting to that moment. Not just in the making of this particular project, but the journey I’ve taken to get to here: being at drama school at 20, putting myself through, finishing at 23, not getting jobs and not really being seen and not really feeling accepted — feeling very odd, very different. And having to figure out how to make my own way through this, because this business is hard, and this business is very hard when you’re a Black girl who’s singing.
I also knew that there are so many people who want to feel seen, who want to know that it’s possible to exceed people’s expectations of them and exceed your own expectations. Even in that moment, I wanted to exceed my own expectations of what I could do. There’s this other thing that’s playing in my head, like, “There are so many people on this set right now, also, who have been waiting for this moment in this film and this project, and we’ve all worked towards this one part.” It’s how we finished shooting; it was the last thing we shot.
JOLIE: Oh, was it?
From Variety US