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Cynthia Erivo slams fan edit of ‘Wicked’ poster as ‘offensive’
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Cynthia Erivo slams fan edit of ‘Wicked’ poster as ‘offensive’

“Wicked” star Cynthia Erivo on Wednesday criticized a fan edit of the movie poster, calling it “very hurtful.”

On Tuesday, a TikTok user going by the name Ferlozar posted a video with the caption “Fixing the Wicked movie poster,” alongside the caption “much better.” The footage itself showed the user using Photoshop tools to make the Universal movie poster look more like the original poster used for the musical’s Playbills.

The main edit to the poster was to hide Erivo’s eyes and much of her face to better mimic the Broadway poster. Her lips are decorated with red and her eyes are hidden under the brim of her hat. Notably, the video does not include any edits to Grande’s outfit or hair, which is all white in the original poster.

The fan edit quickly went viral, with nearly seven million views on TikTok at the time of writing. A separate fan account reposted the finished product on Instagram, and that’s where Erivo took notice.

“This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have ever seen, equivalent to that horrible Ai (sic) of us fighting, equivalent to people asking the question ‘is your ***** green?’” Erivo wrote in an message to her. story. “None of this is funny. None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us.”

Cynthia Erivo/Instagram

She further noted that the original poster wasn’t even based on real actors, but was always just an illustration, explaining why the poster for the movie ‘Wicked’ purposefully chose to show Elphaba’s face.

“I am a real human being who has chosen to look straight down the barrel of the camera at you, the viewer… because we communicate without words with our eyes,” she said.

“Our poster is a tribute and not an imitation; to dress my face and hide my eyes is to blot me out. And that is just very painful.”

At the time of writing, Erivo’s costar Ariana Grande had not publicly addressed the new poster.

See the official version of the ‘Wicked’ poster below.

bad movie poster
Official ‘Wicked’ poster

“Wicked” will be released in theaters on November 22.

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