Cynthia Erivo Sings With 'A Bit Of A Smile'
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This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. Singer and actress Cynthia Erivo has just been nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked. Here she is singing one of that musical's most iconic songs.
It's time to try. Defying gravity I think I'll try Defying gravity And you can't pull me down Can't I make you understand You're having delusions of grandeur I'm through accepting limits Cause someone says they're so Some things I cannot change But till I try I'll never know Too long I've been afraid of Losing love I guess I've lost Well if that's love It comes at much too high a cost I'd sooner abide Defying gravity
That's Cynthia Erivo. In 2016, after coming to the U.S. from England, Erivo starred in the Broadway revival of the musical The Color Purple, winning a Tony and Drama Desk Award. For her starring role as Harriet Tubman in the film Harriet, she was nominated for an Oscar and also was nominated for the movie's closing credits song, Stand Up, which she co-wrote and sang. Erivo played Aretha Franklin in the TV miniseries Genius Aretha. She also co-starred in the HBO series The Outsider. And she released an album of songs she co-wrote titled Chapter One, Verse One, and wrote a children's book called Remember to Dream, Ebere. Erivo grew up in South London, where her parents emigrated from Nigeria. Terry Gross spoke with Cynthia Erivo in 2021 and asked her about playing Aretha Franklin. They began with this scene from the miniseries Genius Aretha. This is set during Aretha's first recording session for Atlantic Records in 1967. Erivo, as Aretha, is at the piano, singing I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You.
you're no good heartbreaker you're lying and you're a cheat i don't know why i let you do these things to me And I would leave you if I could. Guess I'm uptight.
That I'm stuck like glue. Cause I ain't never, I ain't never, I ain't never, no, no, loved a man the way that I, I love him.
That's Cynthia Erivo from the miniseries Genius Aretha. Cynthia Erivo, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you. It is such a pleasure to have you on the show. How did you start listening to Aretha Franklin?
When I was a kid, and we were... So there's this radio station in the UK called Magic FM, and it plays everything. Everything from, let's say, I don't know if you know a band called Mike and the Mechanics, to the Eurythmics, to Kate Bush, to Aretha, to Gladys Knight, Patti LaBelle, Lauryn Hill, the whole lot. And so when we were only... be on the way to school, my mum would always have that radio station on. And the first time I heard it, it was from there. I think, I want to say the first thing I heard was sisters are doing it for themselves. And then I heard, I think it was Till You Come Back to Me. So I had heard Aretha in like two different ways. One with Annie Lennox and then one on her own from two different times.
And I just sort of fell in love. I didn't really, I didn't really know because I didn't know who that was. And then I started asking questions and my mum told me it was Aretha Franklin. And so I was aware of How much I loved music and that I wanted to be a singer and I just sort of fell in love with her voice. The fact that she could do that with Annie Lennox and then that on her own just was astounding to me. Did you try to emulate her? I don't think I tried to emulate her. I just wanted to listen to everything she had. And I started learning her music pretty, pretty early. Yeah.
I know you've said that when you were listening to Aretha before playing her, that one of the things you were listening for is where did she breathe?
Oh, yeah. Why was that important? Because the breath, I think, tells you everything about what the person is trying to say. You know, if you look at a sentence, where the comma goes tells you what the sentence means. If I say, today I've been feeling really, really bad. But, and now I say, today I've been feeling really bad. Bad. But it'll be all right.
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