Cynthia Erivo is calling out a fan-edited “Wicked” poster that partially hides her face.
On Wednesday, the actor shared a photo on her Instagram story of the altered poster — which conceals Erivo’s eyes and changes the color of her lips from green to red — and called the modified image “deeply hurtful.”
In the upcoming Jon M. Chu-directed film, Erivo plays Elphaba, who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West, alongside singer Ariana Grande as Glinda the Good Witch.
The movie’s official poster references the famous illustrated version for the original Broadway musical but differs in that it shows Erivo’s Elphaba with her hat lifted and revealing her eyes, as well as having green and not red lips. The fan-edited poster seems to be an attempt at having the official version resemble the illustrated one.
“This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen, equal to that awful AI of us fighting, equal to people posing the question ‘is your ***** green,’” Erivo captioned her post alongside the fan-made poster. “None of this is funny. None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us.”
“The original poster is an ILLUSTRATION,” the Grammy winner added. “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.”
HuffPost has reached out to Universal Pictures (which is the movie’s distributor) and Erivo’s reps for comment.
In a follow-up Instagram story post, Erivo reshared the film’s official poster, writing, “Let me put this right here, to remind you and cleanse your palette.”
Grande has not publicly addressed the edited poster, but seemingly supported Erivo by also resharing the official “Wicked” poster to her Instagram story on Wednesday.
“Wicked,” which also stars Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum and Bowen Yang, hits theaters Nov. 27.
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