Cynthia Erivo explains how ‘Wicked’ used her ‘physically’ and ‘mentally’

Cynthia Erivo might just have a Gen-Z coded complain from her routine.

During the screening of her 2024 musical film, Wicked, where she portrayed the Wicked Witch of the West, at a Q&A session held in the Academy Museum’s the Ted Mann Theatre in Los Angeles, revealed she suffered from a lack of sleep during the filming.

“I think I consciously run towards things that will use me physically, as well as mentally, because I believe that the body and the mind are intrinsically, truly intrinsically linked,” Erivo told the host, Kristen Bell.

She continued, “Sometimes the body is the thing that tells the mind what to do, and sometimes the mind is the thing that will tell the body what to do because I feel like I’m a very physical person.”

“I want both things to be in action. I want both things to be being used,” The Outsider star added.

Expressing a rather introspective thought, Erivo also wondered whether pushing herself for roles is “healthy” or not, detailing how she would sleep for less than three hours each night during the making of the adaptation of the hit Broadway musical.

Also explaining how she would first wake-up for a two-hour-long workout, she noted it was because she wanted to keep her body adaptable to the flying stunts she had to perform on set.

“I had never flown before. I just knew I wanted to, I’d flown a small amount, but nothing like this before. And that requires your core to be the strongest you could possibly be, because the wires will take you from one place to another,” Erivo mentioned.

She continued, “JoMcLaren, my stunt coordinator, was so good with me. She was like, ‘Are you sure you want to do all of this?’ And I said, ‘Yes,’”

Then proceeding towards how Cynthia Erivo executed her stunts, she stated, “And so, what I would need to do is be ready enough so that when the wires are working to move me from point A to point B to point C, if we’re doing a loop to loop, which is that big loop, I have to get myself over and round without my legs just falling behind me.”