Cynthia Erivo Slams Viral Fan Edit Of Wicked Poster As The 'Wildest And Most Offensive Thing I've Seen'

Wicked star Cynthia Erivo has strongly criticized a fan-made edit of one of the film’s posters, calling it both 'degrading' and 'deeply hurtful'.

The upcoming movie, set to be released next month, is an adaptation of the hugely successful Broadway musical of the same name, and serves as a prequel to The Wizard of Oz.

Erivo plays the role of Elphaba, the character who eventually becomes known as the Wicked Witch of the West and a main antagonist to Dorothy in the classic tale.

Alongside Erivo, Ariana Grande stars as Glinda the Good Witch, and Jeff Goldblum appears as the Wizard himself.

This highly anticipated film will be released in two parts, with the second part slated for November 2025.

But before the film's official release, some fans shifted their focus from criticizing Ariana's accent in the film—something that gained traction after filming concluded—to editing one of the movie’s posters.

Even if you haven’t seen the Broadway musical, you’ve probably come across the iconic image: Elphaba, hat slightly covering her face, smirking while Glinda whispers into her ear.

Warner Bros. recreated this image for the movie poster, only this time, Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba is staring directly at the audience with her hat brim pulled higher to reveal her face.

This small change sparked some fans to take to Photoshop to “correct” the poster, which led to quite a bit of controversy.

The original Wicked theater poster Chris Harris/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

In these fan edits, people chose to obscure Erivo’s face under the hat again and even added red lipstick to her character’s appearance.

Some fans took things a step further by using AI to create videos of Erivo and Grande’s characters engaging in a fictional fight.

Clearly, some people have a little too much free time, don’t they?

The Wicked poster Warner Bros. put out Warner Bros

Not surprisingly, Erivo didn’t take this lightly. She responded with a powerful message to those who altered the poster, sharing her thoughts on her Instagram Story.

She wrote: "This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen, equal to that awful AI of us fighting, equal to people posing the question 'is your ***** green'. None of this is funny. None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us. The original poster is an ILLUSTRATION. I am a real life human being, who chose to to look right down the barrel of the camera to you, the viewer… because, without words we communicate with our eyes."

Fans took to X to 'fix' the poster X

Erivo continued her statement, writing: "Our poster is an homage not an imitation, to edit my face and hide my eyes is to erase me. And that is just deeply hurtful."

Fans who didn’t participate in editing the poster quickly rallied to support her.

One fan expressed their frustration, writing: "All of you supposed 'Wicked fans' should be f**king ashamed of yourselves."

Cynthia Erivo was not happy Instagram/@cynthiaerivo

Another person voiced their anger, saying: "I don't care how much you love the original poster. For a show that's all about prejudice and the color of a young woman's skin the racism couldn't be any clearer. You do not deserve this film."

Someone else added their thoughts, writing: "If I see one more tweet saying 'she's doing too much' 'it's just a poster'… they paid homage to the Broadway poster but that doesn't give YOU the right to edit her face from the poster. You can tell she's deeply hurt by this and if you can't see that - then you're the issue."

The movie Wicked is scheduled to hit theaters in the US on November 22.