Let Cynthia Erivo feel how she wants.

 When tickets for the Wicked movie came on sale, one of the posters that popped up scratched an itch a lot of fans had. Showing Ariana Grande's Glinda whispering to Cynthia Erivo's Elphaba, it clearly re-enacted the classic poster/Playbill cover for the musical.

However, some fans weren't pleased at the tribute to the poster because it didn't mimic the original poster closely enough.

The original poster is a little brilliant in how minimalist it looks. As Wicked would have its cast change, the decision to not clearly depict the original cast members means it would work after they'd been replaced. And as such, over 20 years later, it's still the artwork used to promote the show. When the show opened in London's West End, it even got a remake with more detailed human figures.

Well, it seems some fans got into Photoshop and decided to make the movie poster look more like the Broadway image. I've elected not to use it here. Apparently, who made it is no secret and there's a video where they talk about it, but I do not wish to harass or call them out specifically, I am going to take the charitable reading that they wanted to make it more closely resemble the musical poster and as such did some touch ups in Photoshop and posted it online where it got passed around.

The main edits were putting a shadow over Elphaba's eyes to hide them and make her lips red and twist them into a smirk. Glinda, whose outfit doesn't resemble the poster at all, only got an edit in raising her hand over nose.

Cynthia Erivo shared the fan edit on her social media with a message strongly disapproving of it:

This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen, equal to that awful Ai of us fighting, equal people posing the question "is your ***** green

None of this is funny
None of this is cute
It degrades me
It degrades us

The original poster in an ILLUSTRATION. I am a real life human being, who chose to look right down the barrel of the camera to you, the viewer ...because, without words we communicate with our eyes.

Our poster is an homage not an imitation, to edit my face and hide my eyes is to erase me. And that is just deeply hurtful.

I have only transcribed the text, no editing. I'll also note that her post included the edit as shared by a Wicked Mexican fan account, so not the original artist's posting, but a share by an account representing the fandom.

The reaction to Cynthia Erivo's objection has been mixed and given the internet, can be very shortsighted and even very nasty. Ultimately, people are going to be watching the movie as people will likely be able to eventually stream it or get a cheap DVD copy and not much will be thought about the poster. But right now, some fans are heated up about it.

Some feel Cynthia shouldn't have said anything, implying she's privileged if this is the most offensive thing she's experienced. Others have been more empathetic.

I guess I need to disclaim that I'm a cisgender gay man who describes himself as white, Cynthia is a woman of color who identifies as queer. I am not the same as her. As such, I am referring to how I've heard people of color talk about their experiences, not from a place of authority. As such, if I make a misstatement, I welcome correction in the comments. And I must state, people of color are not a monolith and can have very different experiences.

People of color, especially in the entertainment industry, often feel disadvantaged as opposed to their white counterparts. Dylan Marron, a man with Latin heritage, has publicly stated that he went to a casting call for Home Alone 3 and was clearly turned away for not being white, not even being considered out the gate. Donald Glover's comments on how Hollywood wouldn't consider him for Spider-Man led to the creation of the popular Spider-Man character Miles Morales, which is a nice outcome, but Donald Glover hasn't yet been able to have a featured role in a Marvel movie. (He's appeared in two, so maybe one day.) And too often, when people of color found roles for them asked for, they often have to play stereotypes or criminals.

In an Oz example, the 1925 silent slapstick film The Wizard of Oz includes African-American actor Spencer Bell using his stage name G. Howe Black as the ironically named character Snowball, who plays up many stereotypes for comedy, his character first being seen eating a watermelon. And this was the most we'd seen a person of color associated with Oz until The Wiz opened on Broadway fifty years later.

There are improvements happening, for example, we have stories intended for people of color to tell in film and television, Cynthia Erivo herself coming to prominence in the musical adaptation of The Color Purple, a story specifically about an African-American woman's life in post-Civil War America in the southern states. Still, we've got a long way to go.

As Elphaba, Cynthia Erivo had to wear makeup and a wig for basically every scene she filmed. (As I haven't seen the films myself yet, I can't say this for sure, but given the source materials, I doubt we'll actually see a "de-greenified" Elphaba.) You don't see her actual skin in the film. As such, in the poster, her eyes are the only thing that is 100% her.

This also ties into how women and especially women of color are expected to maintain a certain appearance in public, leading to how often they use makeup, hair care products, hair extensions or even full wigs. Meanwhile, men generally just have to make sure they don't look terrible.

What I'm trying to get at is that as Elphaba, Cynthia Erivo likely feels a lot of pressure as a woman of color starring in a major motion picture in an adaptation of an internationally beloved musical with a built in fan base. If she doesn't like to see how her image is being altered and presented by fan pages online, let her say so. We've heard enough to get that she had a lot of input in how her version of Elphaba would look and be presented.

Film is a collaborative art. I get it's also subjective. We've been expecting Wicked's film adaptation basically since it became a hit on Broadway. We all have ideas on how moments should've been done or how designs should've been done for a big screen version.

But consider that the people who made the decisions of how it should look and actually were photographed are people themselves. Ariana Grande has commented that bringing the musical to life on film was very emotional, so people really put their all into this. To see their work remixed without a thought as to how they might feel can really be a blow.

And consider this. The film is actually just the first part of the story, adapting the first act of the musical, except they've made it just just twenty minutes shy of three hours long. There's a lot in the film that's not in the musical. We've yet to see and fully appreciate just what these efforts are. And as such, that the poster paying homage to the musical's famous artwork isn't an exact mimic should really be expected.

And I'd be a hypocrite to criticize fan edits having done some myself, but they should be done and presented as tributes or imagining ideas, not presented as an alternative to a realized creative vision.

And when people feel something diminishes their own work, maybe instead of telling them they're entitled or that they shouldn't have said anything, maybe try hearing them out with an empathetic heart instead.