Cynthia Erivo admits she felt ‘vulnerable’ after shaving her head to play Elphaba in Wicked

Cynthia Erivo has candidly shared what it was like to shave her head for her role as Elphaba in Wicked.

Erivo recently recalled the moment she looked in the mirror after taking off the green makeup and seeing her shaved head for the first time.

Speaking at the Canva Create event at SoFi Stadium in LA (via People), she said, “I remember feeling so open and vulnerable when there was nothing there.”

She added, “I saw my face in the mirror with no hair at all.”

“I thought I’d really like that. I like how open that is, I like how much of a black canvas it is, and I like that there’s nothing but my eyes.”

The Oscar-nominated actress said she’s felt more grounded in her body since the dramatic cut. But this wasn’t the first time she experimented with her hair.

“I used to get my hair braided in different colours,” she said, recalling one of her favourite looks.

“To this day, there was one hair salad. I’m gonna get white and red braids. You couldn’t tell me that it wasn’t the best hairstyle I had ever done.”

Erivo shared that she began leaning into shorter styles back in drama school.

“I had a lot of hair when I was younger,” she said.

“When we were graduating… I thought, ‘Oh, I want people to see my face.’”

Though her stylist initially refused to cut her hair, worried she’d regret it, Erivo came back two days later and had it all chopped off.

She also praised hairstylist Sim Camps for helping create Elphaba’s signature look.

Eriva said, “I bumped into Sim on a job called Luther, and she just had, just had a wonderful way of the being, but she is an expert.”

 “She’s just brilliant at what she does, and her eye for detail is beyond, and when I told her I wanted to have micro braids for this character, she was like ‘Hold on, wait, I know exactly what to do.’ ”

Camps worked with a wig maker from one of Erivo’s past theatre roles to design a green-tinted lace wig that looked like it was growing straight from her scalp.

“She’s just brilliant at what she does,” Erivo said.

Later in the talk, Erivo gave insight into how she prepares for roles.

She explained, “A lot of the times it’s nothing to do with the entire project.”

“It’s often to do with who the person I’m being asked to play is, if I’ve met them, if I like them or not, sometimes if I don’t like them,” she continued.

“That’s also the challenge to find empathy for the person that I might be playing because I’ve not met them before, and I don’t know what they’re like, and I haven’t experienced that person before.” 

She went on, “So it gives me the challenge of, well, ‘How do I approach this person? How do I have empathy and make this person real?'”

“‘How do I make other people maybe have empathy for this person, even though ordinarily you might not?’”

“That’s sort of how I approach the work and the characters that I play. … If I’m daunted by them then I want to discover who they are.”

Erivo also touched upon her upcoming second studio album, “I Forgive You”, which is set to drop on June 6, 2025.

She further added, “It’s the same feeling how I sing and the songs I choose.”

“Is it going to make me work harder than I normally do?”

“Is it going to make me challenge how much I can do?”

“Is it going to make me push at the edges of the boundaries that I think I might have? And if I do think there are boundaries, can I move past them?”