They held space together, and now they may be holding Golden Globes. Both Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were recognized for their work in Wicked on Monday by the awards body, with Erivo picking up a nomination for best leading actress in a musical or comedy and Grande earning her first Globe nomination for best supporting actress in a motion picture. “It’s been a very tearful morning,” Grande told VF over Zoom. “I feel so grateful.”
In the back of a car next to her beloved dog, Toulouse, Grande—appropriately decked out in a Shiz University sweatshirt—recounted exactly what she was doing when she found out the good news. “I was in bed playing Mario Party Jamboree,” she tells VF. “Then my team called me and I was sobbing. And then my mom called me and we were both sobbing.”
While Grande was gaming and weeping in New York, Erivo was on the other side of the country getting some much-needed shut-eye. “I got back from London literally last night. I was in my bed,” Erivo says in a separate call. “A phone went off at 6 a.m. or something. I turned over and looked, and my phone was going crazy. Many people had already been messaging me. That’s how I found out.”
Of course, one of the first phone calls Erivo made was to her costar. “I called her this morning. I was like, ‘Hi, baby. Congratulations, Golden Globe nominee,’” Erivo says. “I love that this is happening for her. I love that this is happening for us together. I love that we get to celebrate this together.” Grande is also thrilled to share her nomination with half of #Gelphie. “I’m so deeply grateful and proud of the work that Cynthia and I have done together, and separately, and together,” says Grande. “You don’t expect it, but when it happens, it’s just truly extraordinary, and I just feel so incredibly emotional and grateful for the acknowledgements.”
Erivo is something of a Golden Globes vet herself, having been nominated four times in four separate categories: lead actress in a drama for Harriet (2020); best original song for “Stand Up,” from Harriet; lead actress in a miniseries for playing music legend Aretha Franklin in Genius (2022); and now lead actress in a musical/comedy for portraying the ultimate outsider in Wicked. “I don’t know why I didn’t put two and two together, but someone said, ‘This is your fourth nomination.’ I said, ‘Oh my God,’ which is wild, but they are all for different things,” says Erivo. “That’s the thing that makes my brain explode—to feel celebrated in each forum that I decided to jump into feels really, really special.”
A veteran of music awards, playing the über-popular Galinda Upland (of the Upper Uplands) marks Grande’s first Globe nomination, and comes after her first competitive acting win for best supporting actress—which she shared with Emilia Pérez’s Zoe Saldaña at the Astra Awards. The recognition for her first major film role has left the pop star, in a word, speechless. “I don’t have words. I really don’t have words,” she says. “I am trying to find them, but they seem to have escaped me.”
However, she quickly finds the words to thank someone crucial to her Wicked journey. “I want to call Nancy Banks, my acting coach, and wake her up and just cry,” she says. “I’m thinking about all of the nights in our sweatpants where we sat on the floor with the scripts and read in between the lines, and got to know Glinda as much as I possibly could.”
With all the excitement and flurry, Erivo and Grande seem mostly grateful for how their film is being received. “I’ve never seen this before. I didn’t expect this,” says Erivo. “And then interviews are coming out. And then it’s the ‘hold space’ and it’s the Gay Men’s Chorus doing a version of that. To see people get this excited and be this creative with something that we got to share with everyone is just really wonderful.”
