The Catalyst
Ideas with a spark, energy, range and the ability to start things.
Cynthia Erivo earns The Catalyst designation through a craft built on emotional truth rather than surface performance. She unlocks characters, and by extension people, by engineering genuine connection: writing 'Grace' from a dying fan's voice, praying Harriet Tubman's spirit into her portrayal, closing an album with 'I love you' to move listeners toward forgiveness.
“As I stand here in front of you, black, bald headed, pierced, and queer. I can say I know a thing or two about being the other. Story is the cautionary tale of what it can sometimes mean to have to stand in your individuality, your otherness, even when systems of oppression are set against you.”
“And I think that the amount of times I've been told that this is the film that people need right now because there's so much hopelessness. People are so afraid. They're really, really scared about what will happen to them and their families and whether or not we're going to go back in time.”
“I feel like defying gravity literally, even though it has the word in it, is the ultimate defiance. It's the one time that she gets to proclaim that she is done with meeting people's expectations. She is done with listening to what people say she can and cannot do. And is deciding to take on the hardest thing.”
“I don't think I was trying to hide. I actually think she's defense. It's like getting there before everybody else does. There is defiance in it in that she is not trying to hide herself from anyone and it's resistance against what people would have other people believe about you. I don't believe this about myself.”
Angie Martinez IRL: “Cynthia Erivo On Wicked Journey, EGOT Quest, Shaving Her Head”
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