Cynthia Erivo has revealed how her younger sister helped her survive the darkest moments of her career – adding that she has been a grounding force since their traumatic childhood and her rise to global fame.
The Wicked star, 38, and her sister, health worker Stephanie, were abandoned by their father when they were young, leaving their mother, Edith, to raise them alone in south London.
He later cut contact completely, disowning both daughters when Cynthia was 16 – telling them during a brief encounter at a tube station that that was the last time they’d see him again.
Speaking on James Corden’s This Life of Mine podcast, Cynthia said: ‘Stephanie is such a singular personality. I’ve never met anyone like her. I feel very lucky to have her as my sister.
‘She is really intentional about everything she does – the food she eats, the way she treats her body, the words she says, the time she spends with people. There is an awareness that she has that not many human beings have.’
When asked what she would say to her sister at that moment, Cynthia replied: ‘I would say thank you for seeing me in 2015 when I didn’t really see it for myself.
Cynthia Erivo has revealed how her younger sister helped her survive the darkest moments of her career
The Wicked star, 38, and her sister, health worker Stephanie, were abandoned by their father when they were young
‘You saw my future before I did – and you seemed more sure about it than I did, and you were probably more brave about it than I was. It felt like you would dive into it for me if you had to, and then pull me in.’
Cynthia spent years working steadily in theatre before she had her major breakthrough in 2015 – her Broadway debut in The Color Purple, a role that would win her a Tony, Grammy and Emmy and propel her into Hollywood.
Stephanie’s thoughtfulness, Cynthia added, shows up in the smallest of ways – including at a recent dinner in London. ‘We call it sister time whenever I’m in London,’ Cynthia said.
‘We both eat very healthily and I found this really cool vegan restaurant and I knew we both could eat pretty well.
‘We sit down to dinner and we have this lovely conversation. We come to the end, I go to pay, and she goes, ‘No! Let’s split it… I’m trying to be intentional about the way I spend time with people I love and the way I pour into my relationships and friendships.
”And because I want us to have an even and considerate relationship, I want us to be good to each other. I feel like splitting it means that we’re always even.”
Cynthia continued: ‘I was so amazed that she had considered this, because when you get to where we are [in our careers], sometimes the expectation is we’ll pay for it, and I have no issues doing that.
‘But just the idea that she thought, ‘I don’t care what you have, I want to do this with you, I want us to share this’ – what a beautiful human being! What a lovely, wonderful, loving thing to do and to say. She doesn’t want anything from me but time.’
Cynthia said: ‘Stephanie is such a singular personality. I’ve never met anyone like her. I feel very lucky to have her as my sister’
She added that Stephanie’s grounded nature has continued to shape their relationship even as her fame has exploded over the last decade.
‘She’s not interested in all of the fancy things,’ she said. ‘She’s just interested in me. My sister’s cool because she’s cool. She wants to go on long walks with me.
‘She wants to chat about everyday stuff. She wants to talk about skincare and she wants to talk about her love of cheese. And yes, we want to talk about clothes and shopping and how she can repurpose things.’
She also praised her sister’s work in restorative health, helping people with terminal illnesses through nutrition and physical fitness.
‘She is a brainiac,’ Cynthia said. ‘But her raison d’être is to help people… and she doesn’t necessarily want to make lots of money from it.’
