Cynthia Erivo, the acclaimed star of the hit film Wicked, has opened up about the devastating moment her biological father abandoned her on a London Underground platform when she was just 16 years old.
The Life-Changing Tube Station Encounter
In her newly released memoir Simply More, the 38-year-old actress and singer recalls with painful clarity the last conversation she ever had with her father. Standing on a Tube platform in London, he told her he never wanted to see her again.
Her immediate response was visceral and emotional - tears welled up in her eyes, and in her blurry-eyed distress, she began walking toward a train travelling in the wrong direction for her journey.
For a brief moment, hope flickered when she saw him walking toward her. "I held my breath," she writes. "Maybe he was going to apologise. Maybe this argument would just disappear."
But that hope was shattered when he walked straight past her without making eye contact or saying a word. "Before my cascading scenarios could solidify into hope, he passed right beside me," Erivo recounts. "I was nothing. A void, an empty space. From that moment forward, to him, I had ceased to exist."
Parallels Between Life and Art
This deeply personal experience has profoundly influenced her performance as Elphaba in Wicked: For Good, the film that has delivered a gravity-defying £170 million in worldwide ticket sales during its opening weekend - doubling the £85 million taken by last year's first instalment.
Erivo recently reflected on the parallels between her green alter ego and her own life in a radio interview. "There were so many sort of real parallels - the relationship with her father, the relationship to being in spaces that don't really include you," she said. "The feelings you see in the movie are very real feelings."
Just as Elphaba's story is shaped by fatherhood - including her relationship with the man who resents her because of her skin colour and the revelation that her actual father is the Wizard of Oz - so too has Erivo's life been influenced by her own father's absence.
Growing Up With Limited Knowledge
In a chapter titled What I Know And Don't Know, the Stockwell-raised star documents her scant knowledge of her Nigerian-born father. She reveals she doesn't know how old he is, what job he does, his parents' names, or even his favourite colour.
What she does know are fragmented details: that he can whistle, "always wore a leather bomber jacket," and, "by some strange stroke of irony," that "he can sing." She also notes that she inherited the gap between her two front teeth from him.
The star doesn't name her father in the memoir, and his name doesn't appear on her birth certificate or alongside her mother Edith's in electoral roll records for the flat where Erivo and her younger sister Stephanie spent their early years.
Describing the immediate aftermath of that Tube station encounter, Erivo writes: "When he told me he didn't want to be in our lives any more, I stood there in shock. My head was empty. No thoughts, just confusion and quiet. And then I walked away. The first step felt like running into a brick wall of pain."
Strength Drawn From Her Mother
Erivo's journey has been empowered by strength drawn from her mother Edith, who faced the hardship of the Biafran War in Nigeria in the late 1960s before coming to the UK aged 24.
Edith intended to pursue a catering degree but ended up studying nursing at night so she could juggle the demands of being a single parent. Erivo credits her mother with documenting her milestones in a baby book, noting when she was 18 months old that her daughter, who "hums when she eats," would grow up to become both a singer and a doctor.
Neighbour Edward Harris, who still lives in the two-storey block of flats where the star grew up, told the Daily Mail: "Edith was always happy when talking about Cynthia. She would tell me what a great singer she was and that she was going to be a star one day. We are all very proud at what Cynthia's achieved because her early life was very difficult."
From Stage Debut to Global Stardom
Erivo's theatrical journey began with her stage debut as a five-year-old in a school nativity play. As a teenager, she joined a local youth theatre group, sang choral classics at her girls Catholic school, and eventually landed a place at RADA after beginning a degree in musical psychology at the University of East London.
She is now vice president of the prestigious institution, but her time there was challenging. Her memoir includes poignant accounts of having to sing for someone else off-stage while being denied big roles.
The 5ft 1in star with the powerhouse voice, septum piercing, and distinctive nails earned rave reviews in London and on Broadway for her performance in The Color Purple as Celie, which landed her a Tony, Grammy, and Emmy. She later starred in the film Harriet, playing slave-turned-abolitionist Harriet Tubman, earning two Oscar nominations.
Finding Peace Through Art
Erivo did see her father twice more - once at a wedding before her acting career took off, and again about three years ago at another wedding. No words were exchanged on either occasion.
Her absent father was the subject of her track You're Not Here from her first solo album in 2021, which she penned to help move on from the pain of abandonment. "There is a part of me that wishes I could have my dad in my life," she said. "But there's also a part that's actually very comfortable because I've written this, knowing that he's not going to be a part of my life at all."
Describing a particularly emotional scene in Wicked where her much-mocked character begins dancing alone before being joined by Ariana Grande's 'good witch' Glinda, Erivo revealed: "Those tears falling out of my eyes, that was not rehearsed. That was not planned. It just happened."
Despite everything, Erivo says she has reached a place of acceptance. "I'm sort of OK with it being exactly what it is. I have no desire to start a relationship. I have no desire to mend a relationship. It doesn't really occupy my thoughts that much."
Instead, she continues to focus on the person who was always present: her mother. At the 2020 Academy Awards, Erivo took Edith as her guest and shared a picture of them on social media, writing: "To the mother who raised me with almost nothing, made sure I wanted for nothing, built her own life and made sure I had everything I needed!! This picture is a testament to how far we have come."
As Cynthia Erivo soars both on and off screen, the pride of her mother stands in stark contrast to what must surely be her father's lament over his decision to walk away from his daughter all those years ago on a London Underground platform.
