Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo on Defying Gravity, the Attack on Diversity and (Maybe) Getting an EGOT

She seems frozen.

Me frozen? Yeah, you're frozen. Yeah, that's a different movie.
Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher.
My guest today is singer, actor, producer, Cynthia Erivo, also known as Elphaba, the star of Wicked, also known as one of the hottest multi-talents in Hollywood right now. I love Wicked.
I talk about it all the time. I saw it when it was first on Broadway.
I thought they did a spectacular version on the screen. It's making a ton of money.
It's a great business. And at the dead hot center of it is Cynthia Erivo, who is just memorable and spectacular in the role she's playing.
Her rise to Wicked fame seems meteoric, if you haven't been paying attention. She's been a name in the musical world since her Broadway debut as Sealy in the 2015 revival of The Color Purple, which I also saw.
She blew away the audience. She, of course, won a Tony for that performance in 2016 and a Grammy and a Daytime Emmy in 2017.
So if you're keeping track, she's just an O short of an EGOT. Arrivo almost landed that Oscar in 2020 when she got two nominations for playing Harriet Tubman in Harriet, one for Best Actress and the other for Best Original Song.
Arevo co-wrote and performed the film's anthem, Stand Up, and she's got another shot at Best Actress and the EGOT for her role as Elphaba in Wicked. Don't tell anybody, but I'm voting for her, not that I can vote.
It's an interesting role, of course, in what is obviously a crazy time. It's about someone who's the other, who's left out, who is persecuted, who is subject to misinformation.
Does that sound like any country right now in this world? It sounds like the United States of America. And she is, in a lot of ways, the resistance, the idea that you can be different and still be worthwhile.
You know, it's really kind of interesting that it's making a lot of money

and is one of the top grossing films of the year

when we're in the midst of what seems like

a huge cultural meltdown on those issues.

Erivo has been very open about how she sees the role,

especially as a queer black woman,

a British citizen from Nigerian parents.

So I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

I'm just a fan.

So is my daughter, Clara, about art, imitating life, imitating art, and more. Stay with us.
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Thanks for being on On. Thank you for having me, Cara.
So let's just start first with Wicked. There's a lot I want to talk to you about being an artist, singing, Hollywood, etc.
Though I am a lesbian, I will not be talking about holding your space because I'm not that lesbian. Thank you.
If you don't mind. I'm kind of a gay man.
So let's start from there. Perfect.
So let's start with Wicked, though. I took my daughter.
I have four kids. I took my only one daughter, but I took her and loved it, by the way.
And she adores you and Ariana Grande and had a wonderful time.

And my son, my little son wants to watch it too now. I'm just curious, where was the first time you saw the musical? I think you were in your 20s.
Is that correct? I was 25 and I saw it in London. I took myself on a solo date.
I knew the music before I knew the show. So after having learned music, after leaving drama school and essentially being able to afford tickets to go and see movies, I took myself to see Wicked for my birthday.
And just what did you think at the time? I saw it when it first was on Broadway, actually. Yeah.
When it was first there 25 years ago. I don't know why, but it really moved me.
I came away from it. I couldn't stop thinking about it.
I think it was particularly that character, Elphaba. I think maybe seeing the songs in situ sort of woke something up in my brain.
It was just the first time I'd seen a story about one, two in a relationship, because that's never a story that you see. And then two, about a person who just doesn't fit, on top of which it was to do with her skin color.
So I just was just sort of taken by it. Yeah.
I interviewed Wicked director John Chu back in November, and he talked about how much he valued input from both you and Ariana Grande in the choreography for the Oz Dust Ballroom, for example. Obviously that dance, he said, was all you and how you did it and how you wanted it done.
How do you think about the experience of that kind of artistic collaboration, how you choose the things you want to work on? I love it. I think it's kind of important.
I think something happens when a director trusts an actor. And that's not to say that everyone, you always have to have your input.
That's not to say that. It's just that when your director trusts that you know when it's necessary, or they trust that what you have to say will enhance something for some reason there's an element of freedom within that because you immediately know that you're trusted so you can play a little more you can make mistakes and and try again and try things over and over and I think because John sort of gave me a little bit of room to play and to influence the way she looked and the way she moved, it meant that I could really own her as the character for myself.
And so I could speak for her when we were discussing things, or actually I think Elphaba might do this, or she might speak up for herself in this moment, or she might actually just be really quiet here. And it meant that we had this ongoing, growing, creative relationship, not just for the piece as a whole, but for the small, tiny, minute details that each person might have.
And particularly for me, I'm a details girl. I like all of the little, if I can find out, why does she have these two rings? Or can she have an earring? Or is it necessary for her to have jewelry? Or can she dress like this in a certain way? Can this be more tailored? And can she wear her hair like this? And if she wore glasses, they'd be like this.
And those little tiny things that make the character three-dimensional as opposed to a 2D picture that you see, I think those things bring it to life, not just for the people watching, but for me. Now this person is real and human, you know? So in that scene, for example, I think you're going for dignity, right? In the face of mockery, presumably.

Yeah.

And how you move the hat and put it on and affixed it. He was talking about the dance and how you held it in different spots was critically important to that scene.
Because it was painful to watch and yet also dignified. in a weird way.

Because I,

when I had gone in

to start rehearsing

for the dance,

there was already a dance

that had been choreographed uh by Christopher Scott and for Doku and I it was really lovely it just didn't feel like the language she spoke so I asked if it was possible for us to sort of go back to the drawing board and begin again and create something that felt more like her. And Christopher and Comfort kindly said yes.
So we started figuring out how she moved. And instead of it being sort of a moment for laughter, it wasn't that I wanted to take the laughter out.
It's just that I wanted to make sure that there was a reason for her to do this dance. So she took that hat off.
What in that dance makes her put it back on? This hat is the source of embarrassment and shame. Then why would she put it back on again? And if she's standing in the middle of the circle, why does she not just walk out? Why does she stay to do this dance? And for me, I felt like that dance was a sort of reclamation of the room she was in and to take back the way in which people would scorn her.
So if you, you can scorn me, but I know I'm supposed to be here, so I'm going to own this space right here, even though you would have me not be here. Yeah, it was a pivot moment in the movie.
It absolutely was a pivot. It's like a moment where she stops trying to appease people and just be honest herself.
I'll be alone and I'll be okay with being alone um and so we we figured out how that would work and i felt like this was maybe the beginning of a spell like maybe the first time she tries to conjure something which is why if you put power into this hat which becomes the emblem of the wicked witch there's a reason to put it back on sort of we wash away what that hat was the embarrassment of it the way people see her in it and we make it something that is imbued with with power and magic right and there's a pride in wearing it because until then one of the obvious themes is an outsider and being invisible to the mainstream, or mocked if you've noticed, right? One of the things you did was, I know it sounds crazy, I watched it again the other night, but you looked down a lot in the movie with your eyes. But it's not looked down in shame, it's sort of looked down in defiance, which was interesting.
And maybe you weren't, maybe that was just me reading into it. But I want to talk about what was the mood you were going for for this character? I don't think I was trying to hide.
I actually think she, it's defense. It's like getting there before everybody else does.
There is defiance in it, in that she is not trying to hide herself from anyone. And it's resistance resistance against what people would have other people believe about you.
I don't believe this about myself. If you believe it, that's fine, but I don't believe this.
And I think it's so interesting because I do think that there's a slight weariness in Elfga because it's sort of something that she's known her whole life. It's constant mockery, the constant making fun of her.
Yeah, you're waiting for the hit. She's always like waiting for, it's like a quiet anxiety that someone's going to say something all the time.
She tries to get there just before someone does say something. But also, I wanted her to have a little joy.
I really her to have hope. Because you can't get to the uncomfortability and the heartbreak of the Ozdoss scene if there isn't hope beforehand.
If she's already in that space, if she's already in the hurt... Given up, yeah.
If she's already given up, then what's the point in her even turning up to the Ozdoss ballroom? What's the point in her even putting that hat on and leaving her dorm room to get there? What's the point in her even staying at Shiz if she truly believes that she can't do the things that she wants to? And so I really wanted to sort of build her up to take the rug out from underneath her almost, you know? Obviously, The Wizard and I, you know, that's a sunny, hopeful song. Yeah, and it wants to be filled with, like, hope and joy and laughter and, like, cheekiness and funniness and all those things that sort of start to slip away from her.
And the moment you think it's not going to happen again, the osdust you get that back again and then

it's ripped out from underneath her again like the capacity for her to believe that anything's

possible still exists and i really wanted that for this character because i knew that the fall is

much harder and the fall is a much further fall to have yeah which is of course flying actually um

john and i talked about the huge undertaking the scene divine gravity obviously the the last and

Thank you. have.
Which is, of course, flying, actually. John and I talked about the huge undertaking,

the scene defying gravity,

obviously, the last and probably most critical scene, although I do

think that ballroom scene, to me, was

the most critical scene, for me at least.

Let's have a listen to what he said about this

scene. Defying gravity was probably

the hardest thing I've ever shot in my life because

it required all

departments. It required our sets when we were building it.
We had like three different sections. We had the actual bottom with the staircase spinning up.
We had the top. And then we had to have another top for the outside because we needed room for the rigging because she was actually going to be all flown around and singing live.
So you can't do this if you don't have Cynthia Erivo. So talk a little bit about that scene.
I feel like Defying Gravity, literally, even though it has a word in it, is the ultimate defiance. It's the one time that she gets to proclaim that she is done with meeting people's expectations.
She is done with listening to what people say she can and cannot do. And it's deciding to take on the hardest thing, but not because of anyone else, but because she sort of realizes that the only one that can do this for her is her.
The only one that she's seeking really acceptance from is herself. And I knew how physically tasking it would be.
I knew that singing and flying would be difficult, but I just didn't care how hard it was going to be because I really felt like experiencing it all helped me to understand what it actually felt like to fly and finding a way to make the sound made me feel really powerful. You have to sort of conjure up that power in other places, as opposed to getting it from your diaphragm where you have to breathe or getting it from a full lung capacity.
You actually have to engage your entire body to make sound. And it means that you immediately have to make different choices than if you were just standing on the ground.
And I wouldn't have changed that for the world. I knew I was up for the challenge.
And that challenge kind of started when we got there because I needed to know what it was to fly in a harness that way to do those sort of big vast tricks and stunts the flying around the perimeter the loop-de-loop and the backflips all of those things whilst making sound and all of that training sort of came beforehand before we could even get to the set but I just I was really prepared to do it be honest. It works a lot better because your reactions are what, you know, because you're singing it.
Yeah, they're really there. Yeah, because you could, it's hard to fake that.
Wicked fans were super quick to pick up on your note change in the last line of the song, the quote-unquote war cry, that every Elphaba scene leads, kind of makes her own. Talk about how you landed your version that's in the movie.
Well, originally I was doing Bible. So I was doing what was written, which is what Idina did.
And when we started to record the practice comps, Stephen Aramis and Stephen Schwartz said, now you do your own. That's great.
Thank you for doing the Bible. your walker what does your walker sound like and i i tried a couple and then i just sort of let go and and and that came out and when it came out when that sound came out when that those succession of notes came out it felt it just felt right it wasn't necessarily a sort of cerebral thoughtful choice it just happened we were rehearsing we were recording it and I tried something the first thing didn't quite feel right and I tried something else didn't quite feel right and then I landed on this and it felt really right what was right about it I don't know it felt really guttural you know I mean it felt um connected and it did feel like a war cry uh for me and I and I and I sort of it sort of stuck I don't know there's a there's a feeling you get when it's when it's right.
And that's what I was looking for.

And it came with that.

We'll be back in a minute.

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Play Celebrity Memoir Book Club. I'm Claire Parker.
And I'm Ashley Hamilton. And this is Celebrity Memoir Book Club.
So you've done this massive tour to promote the movie, often with Ariana Grande. Obviously, you've created moment after moment after moment.
I'm not going to get into all of them because there's so many. But the numbers, obviously, it's paying off because the numbers are huge.
This is one of the biggest grossing movies this year. And now you have the Oscars.
Now, the issue is blockbusters almost never win, especially when they're held by women and women are the main actors. I was thinking, Barbie, there's so many.
There's so many. How are you looking at this? Why go on this, I mean, massive tour? I'm just curious how you think about what you're doing here.
I look at it as, the tour I think is just to make sure that people go and see this film. I think it's an important film to see.
I think it's important for everyone to see, not just for women to see. And that's sort of the thing that's coming back to me.
Men are saying that they've been to see this film and they are connecting with it on a level. They are.
I took my 19-year-old son. He didn't want to go.
He goes, that's a chick film. He's 19.
He's a frat bro in Michigan. And I said, you're going with Mama.
And I'll go to Gladiator together afterwards, which I also liked. But he loved it.
He thought it was incredibly powerful. And I think that's actually the important thing.
I think part of doing this tour is to make sure that everybody understands that it's not just a chick film. It's not just for little girls.
It's not just for kids. That it's actually for everyone.
It is something for everyone in it. And that just because there are two women protagonists, that doesn't automatically mean that no men can understand what's going on.
We don't say that of films that are mainly male. And most films are mainly male.
I mean, we have The Irishman, which was quite frankly, all men, but nobody is saying this is a dude film. No, we go and we watch it because it's a good film.
We go and we watch good cinema. And I think with big movies, we sort of like, we don't allow them to also be medicine too.
They can also feed you things that we need to know about the human condition. And I believe that this is what this film has the power to do.
Bring people in, make people believe in magic, but also make people think about what it is to change your mind, to make a person feel like they don't belong, to ask for forgiveness and to forgive, to know what it feels like to not belong and also to see yourself in that and then maybe find ways for yourself to accept who you are so you aren't searching for other people to accept you. There is so much in this film that I think is really important for people to see.
I would agree. I mean, my favorite line you were talking about, Divine Gredi, a second ago is, no wizard that there is or was is ever going to bring me down, which is one of the great lines.
And it feels like it's become my motto for this. I've covered Elon Musk for 30 years, and I know him very well, and he's a terrible person.
But, you know, in this Trump 2.0 world, I always think about someone like an Elon Musk and this song meeting that moment, even if it's 25 years old. Talk a little bit about that, because you have this film that's against the zeitgeist right now, or whatever it happens to be.
There's no way we could have imagined that this was what was going to happen. I mean, honestly, it took more than 20 years for it to become what it is, for it to get to the screen.
And yet somehow we've managed to land right when we're supposed to land. Perfect timing.
And I think that the amount of times I've been told that this is the film that people need right now because there's so much hopelessness um people are so afraid they're really really scared about what will happen to them and their families and uh and and whether or not we're going to go back in time now we do not know for sure but i think a film like this can help us be hopeful about the fact that we are not helpless and that it takes a little bravery to change things, but things can change. We are more powerful than we allow ourselves to be, even against the worst of it.
And I just think that this film is really important for that now. One of the things that I was thinking about, given the time of the release, which is just after the election, do you think the reception to Wicked would have been different if Kamala Harris had won, at least in this country, as a personification of the opposition in film? Were you ever worried that you personally could have come under attack by MAGA if the election had gone the other way, for example?

I don't think I was ever worried about whether I would come under attack.

Because I actually think, strange enough, I think people of all ages, from all walks of life, are watching this movie.

I think a person who might be wearing a MAGA cap is still watching it.

In fact, I know there are people who are wearing MAGA caps that have worn it.

I've spoken to a person who's wearing a MAGA cap who definitely watched this movie and loved the movie.

What did they say to you? That they loved it and it was really special. There is humanity in this.
That's the thing I think is really important. Films can shift the way people think and feel.
And this movie, I think, is able to shift the way people feel and think. And there are people, anyone who doesn't want to shift or think or feel or change the way they see things, it's just simply, I think, afraid of what it looks like on the other side if they have to look at the mirror and go, oh, maybe I've been wrong.
Right. But you don't see it as an opposition movie or a resistance movie or anything like that.
I think anything that has women in the lead, that is talking about difference, that is talking about people who are on the outside, it will always have an element of resistance in it because there's some genetic makeup of it. But more than it being resistance, I think it's a movie about humanity,

which everyone can afford to see, I think. Yeah.
It's a dirty word, diversity right now, but it's not a dirty word. I wish we could all just get over ourselves.
The word diversity simply means many different things in one place. It should be a norm.
We shouldn't be discussing we need diversity because it all should just be as it is. When you walk outside, you see thousands and thousands of different people who aren't at the same as you.
That is diversity. We're just simply wanting to see it, what we see in real life on our screens.
There should be, and in our workplaces and where we live. Yeah, there should be.
Well, there should be. They're scrubbing it from everything right now, which makes it more powerful.
Which is insane. Actually, it makes everyone weaker.
Doing that makes everyone weaker. And, you know, I'm sure that the opposite is to be thought of.
We think that if we just, if we make it just us, then it will be, no, because you lose, you lose out on the thoughts of other people on how to actually cater to an actual mass. You're actually only connecting with a small amount of people, not everybody, which is a sad loss, I think.
But I don't think it will remain right. You know, the story is about systematic government surveillance, oppression by incompetent leaders, lying, misinformation,

marginalized people who've been other rising up to fight against injustice. It's really kind of interesting.
Gregory Maguire wrote it that way. And he wanted that, you know, at the forefront of

it. And I think it's important to keep reminding ourselves that those systems are in place.
If we're not mindful of it, we actually end up rewinding. Well, in fact, when I saw it for the first time, I saw it, I was like, oh, this is about my life.
I'm going to be gay. But I was like, oh, I see who wrote this.
Like, you know what I mean? But speaking of that, I want to ask you about something you said in a speech last year

when you accepted the Schrader Award

in Los Angeles LGBT Center.

Let me play a part. I thought this was a wonderful

speech you gave. As I stand

here in front of you, black,

bald-headed,

pierced, and queer.

Thank you. It is the story of how a colorful, powerful, magical woman, despite being disparaged, demonized, and discriminated against, becomes a hero.
Wicked is the reclamation and the reimagining of all the labels that are used against her. It is the proclamation of her right to exist in all of her glass box, which I thought was a really wonderful metaphor.
Yeah. And you said, there you were, vibrant and beautiful and falling in love, and I had my nose pressed up against the glass, looking out at all of you separate and apart.
It took time for me to outgrow my box, but that gift that it gives us space to see ourselves clear enough to know that denying a part of oneself is a disservice to a whole. But now the glass is shattered and there's no box in sight.
And I've walked out into the wide open spaces, into the arms of people, and it feels like home. Talk a little bit about that, shattering of the box i think everyone people have different metaphors for that yeah i i i had not really talked about my queerness for such a long time and yeah and it was so loud for me uh and i was very sure of it and i just i didn't have the words and I couldn't, I had never spoken about it.

And until Edward Enfield, who knew me very well, asked if I...

Just for people who don't know, that's Vogue Magazine's editor in Britain.

He had asked me, I call him Uncle Edward.

He asked me if I wanted to share it, if I wanted to be a part of an edition, a Pride edition.

And I said, yes, because I felt really safe with him. And it was the first time that I was just like, I think I'm done not being everything that I'm supposed to be because I felt like it was occupying so much space and it was like loud.
And I just, I wanted to get rid of the noise and claim back the space a bit so I could actually just exist and be a human in the world and create more. I really felt like the more I hid something, the more I suppressed it, the less space I was using to create and be.
And I wasn't truly, I felt like I wasn't being honest with myself and with other people about who I was and I just was over it I was done I mean it is obviously so debilitating it being hiding is always debilitating and yeah it used to be much worse it's still debilitating and last night I was at an event in San Francisco or two nights ago and, and a young trans reporter, it was at a journalism thing, asked me from the audience, I'm a trans woman, should I talk about it? And I said, you can't hide, it will kill you. It's like a cancer within a person.
Yeah, I think that's, it just grows. And I felt myself getting almost resentful that other people could just be and enjoy their lives as queer out people and I was like I want that for myself I want to be able to talk about it when someone brings it up in a room I want to be able to say yeah I'm me too I want to be able to say I want to be able to share in those conversations and I wasn't I couldn't and I was and I was quiet and I just was over it.
Why was that? Why be quiet? Were you frightened of? I was just afraid that it would make the spaces that I could be a part of smaller. I think I thought it would get me.
There's not many queer people in theater, but go ahead. It's not.
It's about TV and screen. And I just was just was like i don't know it's one thing to be a black girl on screen it's another to be a queer black girl and in the mainstream so i just was like i don't know if this is going to like end this for me but i know that i can't continue pretending that just doesn't work i've been in so many conversations where people were talking about their lives and, you know, how they loved.
And, you know, you're in theater and you're around so many people who are that way. And I was just like, why? I can't pretend anymore.
It's just after you hear those conversations over and over and over and over again and you're like it's right on the tip of your tongue you want to be like me too and you don't I just don't want to do it anymore I had just interviewed Laverne Cox who said trans people should start to hide again Laverne was specifically talking about transgender kids they should go stealth for their safety she. She wasn't saying it's a good thing.
She's worried about kids today. What advice would you give for young people who would be struggling, especially in this political climate? It is scary in this country at this point.
I'm scared. I mean, I've been through the whole thing.
I can't lie and say that I'm not frightened for young children who are discovering who they are and trying to navigate what it is to be queer for themselves and what it is to be trans and trying to figure out where they sit within the world. And I hope that they seek out adults who understand what it is they might be going through, less than hiding from the world, there have to be older people, older adults that understand and have the experience that can be soft places to land.
I really don't want people to hide themselves. I don't want people to hide who they are.
So I don't think that actually helps. I understand why that is the suggestion.
And I want kids to be safe. I want young teenagers to be safe.
I want people to be safe. But I wonder if there is a a middle ground where it is about finding chosen family who will accept you for who you are so that those are safe spaces for you to just be.
You do play a lot of rebel characters. You were nominated for an Oscar for your portrayal of Harriet Tubman.
You played Aretha Franklin. Celie from Colored Purple takes a stand.
Have you been drawn or feel compelled to be an advocate or activist at all or not? I, I think maybe subconsciously I'm moving towards it consistently. I think I find that the work allows me to sort of plant my flag in the sand about what I believe and the way I see our place in the world.
Um, I think I'm constantly seeking out characters who want something and who stand for more than just nothing. Whether it's Aretha, who actually was an activist, and I don't know that many people even know this.
Absolutely, yeah. Or it's Celie, who has to figure out what it means to love and is also a queer character.
Or whether it's Alphabot. I think I seek them out by accident.
It just are, those are the desirable characters for me. I'm drawn to them because they have something to say.
And I guess there's something thrilling about using my voice to say what they want to say, but it's also kind of saying what I want to say too. We'll be back in a minute.
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Visit ucsd.edu slash research. One of the things you use is your voice for music, because integral to all the roles you play that people know of right now.
In 2019, you got an Oscar nod for the song Stand Up, which you were, I think, a co-writer with in Harriet, which you also performed.

The film's not a musical, but the music plays a central role as a mode of communication in that movie, for sure.

You also co-wrote and performed a song in the indie film Drift, which came out in 2023.

How important is music playing your career going forward?

I mean, I suspect you're someone, unfortunately, that every time you show up, they want you to sing, right? The party. Like, please sing.
Music is completely, it's like my second language, essentially. So I feel like it all goes hand in hand.
I think it's always been a part of how I express and how I tell stories. And I love that somehow it sort of weaved its way into everything that I've kind of done, maybe except for a TV role, Holly Gibney, who doesn't like music, strangely enough.
But I think that using music to express and tell a story, because I really do believe that music is the bit that comes after there's not enough that the words aren't enough so to be able to use that for me is great I I feel very privileged and very lucky to be able to access that part of myself because I do think it's a really vulnerable part which is probably why I'm drawn to it a lot and why I keep trying to sometimes I actively actively put it in. There was no real music in Drift.
It's something I knew I wanted to write immediately. Yeah.
It felt like it was necessary to hear this character's thought process and story in music because it accesses the most vulnerable parts of people. Can you explain what Drift was briefly? Drift was a little indie movie that I made.
You produced it too. I produced it too.
Was acting in it as a character called Jacqueline, who was a refugee from Liberia, but was born to a well-to-do family, political family,

who, uh, was, uh, massacred. And then she escapes to Greece and you're essentially

watching her life as she tries to survive in Greece. It's sort of like a recitative on,

on the condition of, uh, of immigrants and of immigrants and refugees in other countries. What direction are you going in now? Do you see yourself returning to the stage, Broadway, producing, indie film? You know, when you get to a blockbuster status, you have a lot more choices, presumably.
But maybe not. I don't know.
Do I have to choose? Can I do what? What are you attracted to about to about that I mean I definitely know that I want to go back to stage at some point I just don't know how or what because following up Celie and the color purple is really hard yeah I need to find the thing that fills me just as much as that and when I knew that the color purple was coming I knew immediately wanted to do it. So I have to, I want to find the thing that does makes me feel that way again.
We might not be exactly the same, but I want to be sure about the thing that I'm going to do. And then, and I, I definitely want, I love the experience of building this big world.
So I, I still want to, I want to experience more of this size of of movie because it's it's really um different to to other things but there are definitely stories that i'm looking at now that are not as big they're much quieter much more intimate things it's the characters that pull me in to be honest it's not necessarily the the project it's always it's always the character. You just, for people who don't know, you've been cast to play in an upcoming film, Children of Blood and Bone, based on a best-selling young adult series.
The character is not nice. It's not nice.
No, she's not. She's not nice.
But she believes that she's justified in her behavior. But I like the core of where she comes from.
Now, you also reportedly have a new album coming out this year. Yeah.
Can you give us a preview of that? The album is sort of born of uh a lot of vocal techniques i build the pads using my own voice i don't have an arranger i don't use arrangements they sort of come to me as they come to me so i'll record a vocal line and then record a vocal line over that and record a vocal line over that as and as each line is being recorded the next set of uh vocal lines will come to me so i i do it uh in real time uh and i've written on all of these songs i have a couple of voices who've come in to work with me on some songs and sometimes it's just me and my producer will wells and I'm really excited about it. It's not a musical.

It's not in the style of theatre, although that doesn't mean that those songs couldn't be in a show. But it's sort of influenced by the type of music that I've listened to over my life, whether it be R&B or sort of Britpop or pop.
And I wasn't even necessarily going for the style. I really wanted to concentrate on the way the voice was used within the music.
And that's what each of those songs has in common, that the voice is really front forward. Yeah.
Right. And then you'll be on the Wicked freight train.
Very versatile. I have two very quick last questions one is i was with i was in los angeles because i'm working on something there and uh a table full of gay people uh lesbian and queer people and they all wanted to know about your nails and i said i'm not asking about her clothing that is something you would ask a woman you know and not a man and they said oh if it was a man i would ask about that or the way you dress and what you're doing I mean they were really curious about what you're doing it for for yourself for performance I said for you that's what I said to me and I dress badly so I wouldn't know but go ahead I dress for me I dress for me because clothing for me is is like a love language.

And that's everything from my piercings to the nails to what I put on my body to my jewelry.

Everything I wear, buy, whatever that is, is because it speaks to me and who I am as a person and the style I want to express.

Some people are more sedate with what they wear.

I'm just not. I've been this way for a really long time.
It's just people can see it a lot more

now. And I guess I'm a rebel in that, that I just sort of, I'm not really afraid about whether

people like it or not. Oh, they loved it.
They loved it. They just wanted to know why.
They all

had theories. I also want people to be encouraged that they can just be themselves.
I think,

Thank you. it or not.
Oh, they loved it. They loved it.
They just wanted to know why. They all had theories.

I also want people to be encouraged that they can just be themselves. I think sometimes we dress because we want people to say that we look good.
We dress because we want to be on the best dress list. I dress because I love it.
I dress because I love clothes and I love dressing up and I love jewelry and I'm a geek about how things are made and who makes it.

And I'll seek out random boutique-y designers that nobody else in the world knows.

And I'll be in love with the way they make things.

And it just is how I am.

Yeah.

It's fantastic.

I wear soft pants myself all the time. Soft clothes.
That's my style. Soft pants.
I'm wearing hard pants today for you, but otherwise I wear soft pants. I'm sorry for asking that, but I told them I would.
So because- No, no, thank you for asking. No, but it's a great question because I think sometimes people think I'm doing it for other people, but I'm really not.
Someone told me they thought your nails were a shield. I was like, I don't know.
No, I think it's the opposite. This is something I've been doing since I was 16 years old, and then I stopped doing it because I was afraid of what people would say.
And then I realized how much fun it is to have them done and how it also gave me three or five hours to sit and do nothing and have someone put their art on my fingers like I in fact the way it brings people in is actually really interesting people are not afraid to hold my hand like they want to look at my fingers which means that people have to be in your personal space. So you're pulling them in.
Ha ha, they were wrong. Last question.
If you won Best Actress at the Oscars, you'd be the youngest person to get in EGOT. Yeah.
What would that mean for you? I mean, I always try and like play this off like it's like a, not a meaningful but it would be really meaningful it would be very exciting to be that to be that to be the youngest person that wins an EGOT and it's also like a sort of big pat on the back from people that I you know I look up to the work that I'm doing and hopefully sort of like a big kick up the bum to keep going and and doing more. You don't necessarily do this for awards.
You don't. You do it because you love the work.
If you just did it for the awards, that would not sustain. It would run out very quickly.
But it is really special for people to think of you in that way. It is really special for those things to come because of this work.
It's rare, you know. It's a nice place to be.
Yes, it is. And you're in a very nice place.
May I just say, I really appreciate you talking to me. I really hope you win.
I scream about it all the time. I'm like, yeah.
I thought the others were fine. Thank you.
Your role, I have to tell you, impacted my daughter in a way that was really meaningful, you know, in terms of the message. She loved it and was thought about it a lot.
It made her think, especially your facial expressions. I know that sounds crazy.
You had a lot of facial expressions she caught. She's a very canny child.
And she came back from school. She's a public schooler in D.C.
And she said, I learned the word diverse today, which is like sort of the last time you're going to be able to learn it if the republicans take over dc schools and and she goes i go what does it mean i didn't want to define it for her she goes but what does that mean and she said it means you're different like uh alphaba that you're just different we're all different and it's okay and i was like thank you it was so good it was such a great moment. Yeah.
It was lovely. It was really sweet.
Can we get your daughter to teach everybody else, please? You know what? Kids should remember everything. It's so interesting.
I've been really astounded by how beautifully and succinctly children have been able to put the themes that are in this film together. It's actually wonderful to hear it from kids because they just get it.
I don't know why that surprises me, but it does because of how clear they are every time.

Every time.

Always.

They know they should run everything. They should not grow up and they should run everything.
Instead, we're being governed by adult children, toddlers, which, you know, is an insult to toddlers. Thank you so much.
I really appreciate it. Thank you very much for this.
This is really awesome. On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor-Russell, Kateri Yoakum, Dave Shaw, Megan Burney, and Kaylin Lynch.
Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Special thanks to Kate Furby, Kate Gallagher, and Corinne Ruff.
Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get a pair of fantastic nails.
If not,

you get some soft pants from me. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher

and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine,

the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with

more.