‘Wicked’ star Cynthia Erivo stuns in emerald gown on Oscars red carpet
Cynthia Erivo, Emma Stone, and Lupita Nyong’o make entrance on the 2025 Oscars red carpet in stunning style.
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BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. − Fresh off a “Wicked” press tour and a nonstop awards show season that saw her nominated for an Academy Award, Screen Actors Guild Award and a Golden Globe, Cynthia Erivo was showered in love and support at Thursday night’s GLAAD Media Awards.
“Obviously, we’ll be celebrating ‘Wicked’ tonight,” host Michael Urie said during his opening speech at the awards show ceremony. “Or as we call it at my house, every night!”
All eyes were on Erivo inside the Beverly Hilton hotel ballroom − and the half a dozen security guards surrounding her − as she walked over to find her seat right as the lights dimmed before the night officially began.
She was the woman of the night, after all: Erivo was there to accept the Stephen F. Kolzak Award, honoring an LGBTQ media professional who has made a lasting impact in raising visibility and empowering the community.
“This has been a wild, wild ride and I’ve been deeply grateful for every second of it,” Erivo began her speech. “More than anything that I have seen and felt, how open-armed my community has been. I have spoken about being your whole self and your true self. I speak about the prizes that come from being you against the odds, but rarely do I acknowledge how hard that can be.”
Before she took the stage, actor and writer Brandon Kyle Goodman called Erivo “an avatar of self-actualization, love and expression,” adding that she inspires “all who see you to see ourselves with such brazen freedom that it awakens the collective imagination.”
Erivo said she “thought that I would make some room for those of us who are trying to find the courage to exist as we want, because I think this is the space to do that.”
Cynthia Erivo says ‘it isn’t easy’ to wake up and choose to be yourself
Erivo, 38, spoke about the hard parts that come with choosing to be yourself and expecting the world to follow suit.
“It isn’t easy. None of it is. Waking up and choosing to be yourself, proclaiming a space belongs to you when you don’t feel welcomed, teaching people on a daily basis how to address you and dealing with the frustration of re-teaching people a word that has been in the human vocabulary since the dawn of time,” Erivo said. “They, them. Words used to describe pedantically two or more people, (and) poetically a person who is simply more.”
She continued: “It isn’t easy to ask people to treat you with dignity, since you should just have it, because it’s a given. It isn’t easy to learn to grow who you are if the world around you is knocking at your door, telling you to stay inside. Some flowers bloom against all the odds, like the peony, but most flowers need to be tended to and cared for before they brave the light and open up their petals to the sun.
“Here in this room, we’ve all been the recipients of a gift that is the opportunity to be more. I doubt that it has come easy to any of us, but more for some, the road has not been one paved with yellow bricks but instead paved with bumps and potholes − whichever road you have traveled, how beautiful it is that you’ve had a road to travel on at all. There are the invisible ones who have had no road at all.”
Looking around the room, Erivo also stressed the “real work is making the ground we leave in our wake level enough for the next person who finds their way to the path we have made.”
“For the person who is searching and searching and has not found it yet,” she added. “This room is full of people who can and will, if they choose – and I hope they will, because I do – to be lanterns to light up your journey and your path on the way to showing the world who you are. We use the phrase ‘out and proud,’ and though you might not have had the strength or capacity to do that now, know that I am proud of your quiet and solitary want to be just that.
“We are all visible,” she said during her speech. “We can be seen. We see each other. I see you. You see me. But think of those who have not been seen. Think of those who sit in the dark and wait for their time, hoping and waiting for a light to light their path. I ask every single one of you in this room, with the spaces that you’re in and the lights that you hold, to point it in the direction of someone who just needs a little guidance.”
Watch Cynthia Erivo’s GLAAD Media Awards speech
The 36th annual GLAAD Awards will stream on Hulu on April 12.
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