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.
Kendrick Sampson, Tessa Thompson and Over 300 Black Artists and Execs Call for Hollywood to Divest From Police (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comKendrick Sampson After co-organizing a demonstration in Los Angeles at which he was hit with a police baton and shot seven times with rubber bullets, Kendrick Sampson (“Insecure,” “Miss Juneteenth”) has penned a letter to the entertainment industry at large, asking Hollywood to divest from the police and invest in the Black community.
The letter, shared exclusively with Variety, was developed alongside Tessa Thompson (“Avengers: Endgame,” “Westworld”) and Black Lives Matter co-founders Patrisse Cullors and Melina Abdullah.
It is signed by over 300 Black artists and executives, among them Thompson’s Marvel co-stars Chadwick Boseman, Anthony Mackie, Michael B.
Read more on variety.com