We can’t get enough of Cynthia Erivo right now. She’s fresh off playing the not-so-wicked witch Elphaba in Wicked, a role she will reprise in next year’s Wicked: For Good, and now she’s busy conquering Hollywood. Her journey has been so satisfying to watch, knowing the prejudice she had to face when she was starting out.
The next step in her career? Playing Jesus Christ.
Yes, it’s true—come August, Erivo will be doing a new take on Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. She will be a Black, female, queer Jesus. But some conservative Christians are, rather predictably, livid about this.
Elon Musk’s far-right social media platform, X, is full of people complaining. “Hollywood is making fun of us now. A [B]lack, female Jesus? That’s too much and it’s ugly,” said one user called Tuzuner. “I have seen very few things more ridiculous than this and there will be fools who like and support this decision. Cynthia Erivo playing Jesus Christ is a disgrace.”
“With all due respect, and humbly submitted, Cynthia Erivo is too BALD, BROWN, and BI to play Jesus,” wrote an X user named John K. Amanchukwu Sr, who seemingly believes that Jesus must have hair to be Jesus. “Casting a woman as Jesus Christ is an intentional form of blasphemy that Hollywood would be fuming over if done to certain other religions.”
Even a politician, Australia’s right-wing Ralph Babet, had something to say. In a ridiculously over-the-top post, he wrote, “Self-proclaimed queer Cynthia Erivo is set to play Jesus Christ. BLASPHEMY. This isn’t about creativity, it’s a direct attack on Christianity, a deliberate insult to our faith and traditions. They mock what is sacred, believing there will be no consequences. These relentless attacks on our beliefs will not stop unless we stop them.”
Frankly, this sort of rhetoric is outright frightening; here’s to hoping Erivo has a good support system by her side as she prepares for the role.
Because the fact remains that Black actresses face truly terrifying levels of hate for taking roles that conservatives think “belong” to white people. For example, last year, Black actress Francesca Amewudah-Rivers played Juliet in a new production of Romeo and Juliet alongside Tom Holland and received so much hate that her peers signed a letter in support of her. Black and Asian Star Wars actors, such as Moses Ingram, Kelly Marie Tran, and Amandla Stenberg, received a truly shocking amount of hate when they appeared in the franchise.
It’s not fair, and in this case, it’s not about religion—it’s about racism. If we’re talking about historical accuracy, Jesus should be portrayed as a Middle Eastern man, so where were these people when Jesus was rarely portrayed as anything other than white in movies? This angry mob objects to Erivo’s gender and queerness, too, even though the Bible states that Jesus instructed his followers to show love to their neighbors and those made outcasts in society.
Furthermore, this is going to be just one interpretation of Jesus in one show that doesn’t paint a realistic picture of Jesus’s life anyway. (Have any of these commentators actually seen Jesus Christ Superstar?) It’s not like anyone is claiming that Jesus genuinely looked like Erivo.
Cynthia Erivo is a Christian herself, by the way. Doesn’t she deserve the chance to see herself in Jesus the same way straight white men do?
