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Cynthia Erivo told Variety the “bodyguard” memes after her Wicked: For Good red-carpet intervention shielding Ariana Grande were rooted in anti-Black bias.
Cynthia Erivo is no longer letting the joke pass. The Wicked star told Variety that the months of “bodyguard” memes that followed her on-camera intervention protecting Ariana Grande at last year’s Wicked: For Good Singapore premiere were rooted in the way Black women are perceived publicly.
The Guardian led with her language. The outlet’s writeup of Erivo’s “insidious nature” quote and her decision not to campaign for Oscars captures the actress saying the meme cycle was specifically about “my physique, my shape, the fact that I was bald.”
The incident itself was November 2025. A man named Johnson Wen vaulted a barrier at Universal Studios Singapore and grabbed Grande on the yellow brick road set up for the premiere, with Erivo stepping in physically to push him off.
The actress described the moment plainly. “Nobody moved. Nobody moved,” Erivo recalled. “So I moved because my brain went, ‘Get him away! Get him out of here!'”
The grip was the part the cameras did not show. “What people couldn’t see is that he wouldn’t let go,” she told Variety. “So I just kept pushing at him to get him off.”
Wen was sentenced to nine days in jail by a Singapore court. He has a documented history of disrupting public events.
The fallout online was where the story shifted. HuffPost UK’s coverage of the bodyguard memes and Erivo’s response to the comparisons notes that videos and posts framing Erivo as Grande’s protective enforcer began circulating within hours of the premiere footage.
Erivo did not laugh it off. “I think that we haven’t really come to terms with the insidious nature of how we view Black women,” she said.
She is not interested in the brush-off. “I’m sure people will read this and think, ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, it’s not about that.’ But it is.”
Her central point was about asymmetry. “Because of that, there was this assumption that I was bigger than my co-star and so I had to be controlling or protecting, and that was my role. I would hazard a guess that it would not have been the same had it been the other way around.”
The Oscar campaign was the casualty. Erivo said she chose not to push for an Academy Award nomination for Wicked: For Good in part because of the meme cycle, telling Variety: “I just felt like my humanity had been bastardised.”
Yahoo’s syndication of Erivo’s Wicked promotional-tour reflection and the Oscars-campaign decision notes that the actress added she “didn’t want to put myself through it. I didn’t feel like I deserved it” after the way her instinctive protective gesture had been recast online.
The numbers tell their own version. The first Wicked film earned $765 million globally on its 2024 release and won two Oscars; Wicked: For Good has earned $541 million and pulled zero Academy Award nominations.
Erivo also addressed the long-standing scrutiny of her friendship with Grande. The first Wicked press tour drew comments from “lots of psychologists seated at home deciding who we were, what we were going through,” she said, with public skeptics doubting the genuineness of the friendship between her and her costar.
Her response there was brisk. “If I’m a friend, then I’m a friend. If I’m not, then I’m not,” Erivo told Variety.
The Singapore moment was, by her telling, the breaking point. After two press tours, two films, and two distinct viral cycles, the actress drew the line on what she would absorb to put herself in front of an Oscars ballot a second time.
