I don’t know about you, but I will gravely miss Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo slaying Wicked premiere fits after the pair gave us a lot of method dressing to talk about the past two years. However, the wildly talented stars might be understandably OK with sitting out a lot of public appearances after what happened at the Singapore premiere during the For Good press tour. Months later, Erivo has recounted what it was like to go viral for defending her co-star when a fan hurled himself at her.
On November 13, 2025, Johnson Wen, a fan, climbed over the barricade of the Singapore premiere of Wicked: For Good and put his arm around Grande before Erivo and a round of security pushed him off her.
In the video he posted about this, he surprised multiple celebrities with the same move, captioning the montage as “I dreamed about meeting my favorite celebrities.” However, there has been clear discomfort when he’s jumped up to surprise the famous people he’s interacted with. Here’s what Erivo remembers about the Wicked: For Good incident:
Nobody moved. Nobody moved. 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.
Erivo recalled what she was thinking in a new interview with Variety. As the profile points out, while many cited the Elphaba actor as a “hero” for how she jumped to Grande’s aid, others found it to be an “overreaction.” Here’s what she thinks:
A stranger is a stranger. Personal space is still personal space. It doesn’t belong to anyone, even if you feel you know the person. In that moment, we were all terrified.
Wen pouncing toward Grande definitely looked like it left her rattled. One should also keep in mind that the singer/actress was diagnosed with PTSD after a suicide bomber killed 22 people at one of her shows in Manchester, England, in 2017. Erivo also had this to say:
I think that we haven’t really come to terms with the insidious nature of how we view Black women. 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.
Following the viral moment, some had referred to Cynthia Erivo as Grande’s “bodyguard”. Erivo said the public reaction to the video thinks “maybe” it caused her to pull back from making as many appearances for Wicked: For Good, especially regarding the film’s awards campaign, which ended with the Wicked sequel getting completely shut out of the 2026 Oscars. As Erivo added:
I just felt like my humanity had been bastardized. 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’s a bummer that Erivo felt that way after all the love for her role as Elphaba in the two musicals. Following the conclusion of the Wicked movies played out in For Good, we’re certainly curious about whether Wicked 3 is in Erivo and Grande’s futures. You can watch both Wicked movies right now with a Peacock subscription or rent/buy them on digital, DVD and Blu-Ray.