Wicked star Cynthia Erivo has some thoughts about the MAGA outrage—fueled by Elon Musk—over her casting as Christ in the Hollywood Bowl’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar.
“You can’t please everyone,” the Tony, Grammy, and Emmy-winner told Billboard in a new interview. “It is legitimately a three-day performance at the Hollywood Bowl where I get to sing my face off. So hopefully they will come and realize, ‘Oh, it’s a musical, the gayest place on Earth.’” The show will run August 1-3.
Many MAGA fans slammed Erivo’s Christ casting as “blasphemy” on social media when her role was first announced in February. What seemed lost on several critics was the tone of the show itself. The 1971 Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera has always been a provocative, at-times critical take on Christ’s life, that over time became a cult favorite among queer audiences.
Musk seemed to have missed that bit of information as well as he chimed in on X with an eyebrow-raised emoji in reply to an X user who wrote, “Imagine doing this to any other religion” next to Erivo’s casting news.
Critics with similar complaints flooded Variety’s social media post announcing the casting with one user in the replies called Erivo playing Christ “anti-Christian bigotry” by “Hollywood.”
But Erivo told Billboard, “Why not?” as she shrugged off naysayers. “The more yourself you are, the more you are in front of people who don’t necessarily understand, the better understanding starts to happen,” she said.
As much as she wants to be “a person you can get positive things from” since “that is the only way you can balance this stuff,” she couldn’t help getting in a jab at Donald Trump for his takeover of the Kennedy Center, where Erivo played some of the most iconic performances of her career.
“I don’t know who gains what from that. I hope that it comes back,” she said. “It’s really sad to have to watch this happen to it. The Kennedy Center is supposed to be a space of creativity and art and music for everyone.”
That said, assimilating to appease Trump and his “anti-woke” mob isn’t on the star’s to-do list, she added.
“I want to encourage people to not decide to just tuck away and start hiding and not being themselves anymore,” she said, “because that is exactly what they want.”
