As anticipation for the adaptation of Wicked continues to grow, so too do a variety of memes and fan edits that are either problematic or could certainly be seen that way. One such adjustment that some fans have made was to the poster for the movie. In the poster, which is an homage to the original Broadway poster, Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba is seen with her signature being whispered to b by Ariana Grande’s Glinda. Fans edited the poster to make it closer to the Broadway version, obscuring Erivo’s eyes and making her lips a brighter red.
“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 p—- green?” she wrote on her Instagram Story while sharing a photo of the edited version of the poster. “None of this is funny. None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us.”
“The original poster is an Illustration,” the actress and Broadway star added. “I am a real life human being, who chose to 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.”
Wicked is set to hit theaters in November, and is supposed to be just the first part of a two-part film that adapts the musical to the big screen. It is a prequel to The Wizard of Oz that tells the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, and questions just how wicked she really was.
