Cynthia Erivo is setting the record straight about what those "bodyguard" jokes really were.

In a candid new interview with Variety, the British-Nigerian actress and EGOT contender spoke plainly about the racist undercurrent she believes fueled the wave of memes and jokes that followed her stepping in to protect co-star Ariana Grande from an intruder at the Wicked: For Good premiere in Singapore last November.

"I think that we haven't really come to terms with the insidious nature of how we view Black women," Erivo told Variety. "And I'm sure people will read this and think, 'Oh, for goodness' sake, it's not about that.' But it is. Because that's what was being made fun of. It was my physique; it was my shape; it was the fact that I was bald; it was about what I looked like. And because of that, there was this assumption that I was bigger than my co-star and so I had to be controlling or protecting, and that was my role. I would hazard a guess that it would not have been the same had it been the other way around."

The incident itself was terrifying. During the Singapore premiere, an Australian TikTok prankster identified as Johnson Wen jumped a barricade and grabbed Grande, who froze. Erivo moved immediately.

"Nobody moved. Nobody moved," she told Variety. "So I moved because my brain went, 'Get him away! Get him out of here!' My immediate reaction was 'Get him away from us.' And what people couldn't see is that he wouldn't let go of Grande. He wouldn't let go. So I just kept pushing at him to get him off."

Most people saw a hero. But the internet — predictably — found another narrative, casting Erivo as Grande's "bodyguard" in joke after joke that leaned into her physicality and appearance.

SZA was among the first to call it out, identifying the response as a textbook example of misogynoir — a term coined by scholar Moya Bailey to describe the specific intersection of racism and sexism directed at Black women.

The experience left a deep mark. Erivo told Variety the backlash made her pull back from Oscar campaigning entirely.

"I just felt like my humanity had been bastardized," she said. "I felt like something I did instinctively had been made to be something that it simply was not because of the way people see women who look like me, and because of the assumptions that are made, and I just didn't want to be a part of that, really and truly. I didn't want to put myself through it. I didn't feel like I deserved it."

It wasn't the first time Erivo faced racialized scrutiny over Wicked. When the casting was first announced, she was accused of being a "woke hire." She pushed back clearly: "There have definitely been conversations about me getting this role as a 'woke hire.' I had to audition, just like everybody else. I have the credentials for it. I've done the work."

Through all of it, Erivo kept showing up — for her co-star, for the work, and for herself. She and Grande, she told Variety, still text almost every day.

"We were holding on by threads," she said of the grueling press tours, "and we were really trying to take care of each other."

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