Watch “Wicked” Star Cynthia Erivo’s Powerful Speech at GLAAD Awards

Wicked star Cynthia Erivo delivered a powerful plea for queer dignity, humanity, and affirmation in her speech at the 36th GLAAD Media Awards.

The event, held in Beverly Hills, California, on Thursday, 27 March, is the world’s largest celebration of media that provides fair, accurate, and inclusive representations of LGBTQ+ people and issues.

Erivo, an Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award winner and an Oscar nominee, is best known for her starring role as Elphaba in the 2024 hit musical film Wicked.

Recognising a Champion for LGBTQ+ Equality

Erivo received GLAAD’s Stephen F Kolzak Award, which honours an openly LGBTQ+ member of the entertainment or media community for their efforts in eliminating homophobia.

In her acceptance speech, Erivo spoke about the challenges LGBTQ+ individuals face in simply being themselves in an often hostile world and highlighted the need for creating an environment that allows them to flourish.

“Some flowers bloom against all the odds, like the peony, but most flowers need to be tended to and cared for before they brave the light and open up their petals to the sun,” she said.

Cynthia Erivo’s Full Speech

Below is Erivo’s moving speech in full (video at the end):

“This has been a wild, wild ride, and I’ve been deeply grateful for every second of it. But more than anything, I have seen and felt how open-armed my community has been.

I have spoken about being your whole self and your true self, I speak about the prizes that come from being you against the odds, but rarely do I acknowledge how hard that can be. So I thought that I would make some room for those of us who are trying to find the courage to exist as we want. Because I think this is the space to do that.

It isn’t easy. None of it is, waking up and choosing to be yourself, proclaiming a space belongs to you when you don’t feel welcomed. Teaching people on a daily basis how to address you, and dealing with the frustration of re-teaching people a word that has been in the human vocabulary since the dawn of time: they/them. Words used to describe pedantically two or more people; poetically, a person who is simply more.

It isn’t easy to ask people to treat you with dignity since you should just have it because it’s a given. It isn’t easy to learn to grow who you are if the world around you is knocking at your door telling you to stay inside. Some flowers bloom against all the odds, like the peony, but most flowers need to be tended to and cared for before they brave the light and open up their petals to the sun.

Here in this room, we have all been the recipients of the gift that is the opportunity to be more. I doubt that it has come easy to any of us, but more, for some, the road has not been one paved with yellow bricks, but instead paved with bumps and potholes. Whichever road you have travelled, how beautiful it is that you’ve had a road to travel on at all.

There are the invisible ones who have had no road at all. For those who have not yet even begun to find the road, be encouraged and be patient with yourself, It will show itself.

I know that this event is to celebrate the work that we do and I am endlessly grateful for this honour and the celebration of this, but the real work is making the ground we leave in our wake level enough for the next person who finds their way to the path we have made. For the person who is searching and searching and has not found it yet.

This room is full of people who can and will, if they choose, and I hope they will, because I do, to be lanterns to light up your journey and your path on your way to showing the world who you are.

We use the phrase ‘out and proud,’ and though you might not have the strength or capacity to do that now, know that I am proud of your quiet and solitary want to be just that.

We are all visible. We can be seen. We see each other. I see you, you see me. But think of those who have not been seen, think of those who sit in the dark and wait their turn, hoping and waiting for a light to light their path.

I ask every single one of you in this room, with the spaces that you’re in, and the lights that you hold, to point it in the direction of someone who just needs a little guidance.

Thank you GLAAD… for this beautiful honour, please all have a beautiful night.”