Cynthia Erivo is revealing how far she pushed herself while filming Wicked — and it sounds pretty extreme.
During a Q&A with Kristen Bell at the Academy Museum this weekend (via People), Cynthia reflected on the intensity of her performance and said that she “consciously [runs] 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.”
“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.”
Cynthia then revealed that she’d sometimes get no more than three hours of sleep every night while filming Wicked. Her routine would include waking up for a two-hour workout on top of two hours in the makeup chair before her 5 a.m. call time. Yikes.
Cynthia explained that the workout routine was necessary due to the practical effects and stunt work that enabled the flying scenes. “I had never flown before. I just knew I wanted to, I’d flown a small amount, but nothing like this before,” she said. “And that requires your core to be the strongest you could possibly be, because the wires will take you from one place to another.”
“Jo McLaren, 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.’ 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.”