Misogynoir and the Wicked Press Tour

When the film adaptation of Wicked (2024) hit theaters last year, it became an instant cultural event. This reception was no surprise given the iconic source material that has long captivated audiences. However the lasting cultural resonance could also be attributed to its casting of Academy Award-winning actress and singer Cynthia Erivo and global pop sensation, Ariana Grande as the ever-so-coveted roles of Elphaba and Glinda. 

Although Elphaba and Glinda share a contentious, but ultimately sweet and revelatory relationship in the film, Erivo and Grande appear to the public eye as only sharing the latter. In fact, beyond the popularity of the film, the press tour delivered many viral moments, particularly those showcasing the closeness between the co-stars. These press junkets garnered major public attention, as they displayed their affection for one another during interviews and teared up when discussing the bond that they have established while playing these roles.

While this mirrors behavior seen on many other press tours, their particular personas and dramatic interactions have been the center of discourse and analysis– making some viewers laugh at their absurd sincerity, others cringe at the melodrama, and many remain simply confused. This has become such a large focal point in the film’s press cycle, to the extent that posts reenacting their behavior and compilations of key “weird” moments during the tour garner millions of views. 

As they exist as major cultural subjects, beyond the memes, the perceived dynamic of Erivo and Grande can actually open up a broader conversation on the performance and perception of female friendships in the media – particularly at the intersection of their identities.

One year later, as the press tour for Wicked: For Good (2025) ensues, similar discourses have re-emerged to do exactly that. This time, it is due to viral moments created by more jarring circumstances, including a recent incident at the Singapore premiere.

While the main cast of Wicked: For Good walked the carpet, one fan traversed barriers and accosted Grande, putting their arm around her. Erivo quickly stepped in to separate the fan from Grande, shielding her. Immediately following this incident, videos and images began to circulate, calling out or playing into the racialized optics of Erivo protecting her co-star. 

While the internet often mocks cringe moments and expressions of sincerity, favoring irony and humor regarding these two, the reactions to this moment were distinct. This incident became a catalyst for people to look more closely at the many different aspects of their public friendship and relationship as co-workers. This includes their identity politics and the controlling images that affect the marginalized communities that Erivo is a part of. Erivo, who in many ways mirrors Elphaba’s otherness, is a queer Black woman, while Grande mirrors Glinda’s privileges as a white woman. As they are inevitably placed in close proximity to each other for the film, and by their own volition, it is not unlikely that their relationship and individual personas will be crafted and rewritten simultaneously and through a binary. It is to the detriment of Erivo that her role in their public friendship is unintentionally resulting in her dehumanization through the eyes of the public, especially when it derived, in a vacuum, from an innocent act of protection between friends.

While members of the Black community have taken to social media to point out the harrowing optics of Erivo serving as a “protector” to a white counterpart, there has been caution to not downplay the potential for fanatic obsession that leads individuals to invade boundaries and violate the safety of celebrities. More so, the conversation has centered around the outward reaction from other users, who are utilizing the incident as a way to masculinize Erivo and infantilize Grande in the process – a phenomenon that happens to Black women in and out of the media constantly.

Fan-art exaggerations of Erivo’s stature have been made, circulating widely along with manipulated images that enlarge her arms, and reenactment videos portraying her as angry and aggressive. Additionally, users on TikTok have been using clips from throughout the press tour to portray a one-sided role as a server and defender. Comments and captions from videos of these posts read as the following:

“Cynthia doesn’t play about Ariana”

“I’m lowkey scared of Cynthia”

“Cynthia is stronger than the security guards”

“Me trying to say hi and hug Ariana, but Cynthia beats my ass”

Somehow, from a moment where Erivo is trying to mitigate harm and the escalation of potential violence, she becomes an imagined aggressor.

Whether or not these two particular individuals play into these roles is secondary to these alarming reactions, as this trope and projection of these roles play out in interracial friendships and queer relationships quite often. These comments are, to some degree, meant to be uplifting, but in a society where Black women are consistently portrayed as subservient and violent, these comments disregard their interiority and complexities. Not only are they commonplace examples of misogynoir, but they come across as dehumanizing and degrading. In many ways, a widespread reaction to this moment signifies that there is a desire to only see Black women portrayed in a particular lens in order to reinforce a racial hierarchy, whether intentionally or not. 

Orienting and understanding Black bodies in this way is a form of antagonism with dire consequences. It is these controlling images that ultimately disserve the Black community, amplifying an immense amount of emotional pressure, impacting their collective mental and physical health, and overall contributing to the obfuscation of the intricacies of the Black identity. Living in the bounds of controlling images inevitably shapes Black individuals' interactions with the world, and it must reach beyond unending expectations of servitude and internalized conceptions of inferiority.