This morning, Cynthia Erivo opened up about her sexuality during an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, further expanding on an interview for British Vogue’s August 2022 Pride issue where the magazine identified her as bisexual.
The 35-year-old award-winning actress told Clarkson about her journey navigating questions about her identity throughout adolescence to her acceptance of it in adulthood.
“I don’t think I had the language to even know what was going on. It’s come much later to me now and it’s wonderful to just be me, really,” she said. “I think it’s sort of made space creatively to just sort of let go of whatever I was hiding.”
Erivo, who is set to play Elphaba in the upcoming Wicked movies directed by Jon M. Chu, spoke about the energy she put into shrouding her queerness over the years — without even realizing she was not living her fully authentic life.
“Once you take the energy away from concealing something that is so a part of you that you can’t hide it, you can put it elsewhere and make more wonderful things,” she shared.
Clarkson said she’d “never heard someone describe it like that,” when Erivo described how she didn’t have the terminology to describe how she felt growing up, though she knew “something was different.”
“We don’t necessarily know the language until someone says these are words that you might want to use, these are expressions you might want to use, here is some space for you so you can speak about yourself without someone else telling you,” Erivo said.
Later on in the show’s Kellyoke segment, Clarkson and Erivo performed a jazzy rendition of “When You Wish Upon A Star.”
Before her Vogue cover, which describes Erivo’s sexuality more specifically as bisexual, the award-winning singer and actress told the Evening Standard she was queer while discussing whether her music video for “The Good” was autobiographical.
