Cynthia Onyedinmanasu Chinasaokwu Erivo (born 8 January 1987) is an English actress, singer, and songwriter.
She is known for her performance as Celie in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple, for which she won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical, the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, and the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program, the latter two she shared with the rest of the cast.
Erivo ventured into films in 2018, with roles in the heist film Widows and the thriller Bad Times at the El Royale. In 2019, she portrayed abolitionist Harriet Tubman in the biopic Harriet, for which she earned nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Grammys Remind Us Not Every Awards Show Has to Be a Hate-Watch: TV Review
variety.comChris Willman Music WriterIf you had to pinpoint a moment at which it was completely clear that the Grammys would be a much happier experience than the Oscars a week ago, ironically, it was during the saddest moment of the show.
That would be the traditional In Memoriam segment, which, at the Academy Awards, wound up being one of the most WTF moments on a pretty much WTF night.
The Oscars’ producers decided that the traditionally solemn parade of the dearly departed should have, as score, “Spirit in the Sky,” an irreverent rock oldie that has always been understood as highly whimsical, if not sarcastic.
Huh? Meanwhile, the Grammys went with a moving medley of wistful Stephen Sondheim classics sung by Rachel Zegler, Cynthia Erivo, Ben Platt and Leslie Odom Jr.
Read more on variety.com