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.
The Partnership: From The Boards To The Soundstage, Fantasia Barrino And Danielle Brooks Have Formed A Bond In ‘The Color Purple’
deadline.comThe sisterhood between Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks began on Broadway. That is, the sisterhood of the order of The Color Purple.
Both women starred on stage in the musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s 1982 Pulitzer-prize winning novel. Barrino spent 10 months in 2007 playing Celie, the poor country girl who survives an abusive step-father and husband and realizes her worth.
Brooks spent a year in the 2015 revival as the defiant Sofia, opposite Cynthia Erivo as Celie. Now filmmaker Blitz Bazawule places them in the exact same parts in his blockbuster musical movie version, starring Taraji P.
Henson, Colman Domingo and Corey Hawkins, with Oprah Winfrey — who was Oscar-nominated for her Sofia in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film version — producing.
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