Cynthia Erivo has blamed her “internal metronome” for the amount of roles she turns down.
The 39-year-old actress is doing the rounds promoting her new movie Prima Facie, which is her first major role since starring as Elphaba in Wicked sequel Wicked: For Good.
Cynthia spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the way she picks and chooses which projects she signs up for, as she explained: “I feel like I have an internal metronome that tells me when something is right for me, and when something is not.”
Due to that, Cynthia “says no to a lot of things”.
In Prima Facie, Cynthia portrays a lawyer who becomes a rape victim, and admitted that the role was one she knew straight away that she had to take on.
She said: “I just knew immediately that I wanted to do this because I knew how important it was. I also I had this feeling that it was more important than I was even aware of, and I wanted to be part of it.”
One of the main reasons she wanted to star in the film was because of the conversation about consent.
She mused: “Consent is sometimes hard for all of us to comprehend. That it’s a big complex thing that is more to do with the way we receive ‘no’ than the way we see a ‘yes.’
‘Now we can have a conversation about that more than about the rape.
“It really is about the consent and the way her lack of consent is received.”
Due to the film’s subject matter, Cynthia had to shoot some difficult scenes with her co-star Daniel Ings.
But she shouted out the intimacy co-ordinator for making them both as comfortable as possible.
She said: ““I think not enough credit is given to intimacy coordinators. They’re often given a hard time for the work that they have to do on the set.
“But the work that they do is really important, and it isn’t just about choreographing a scene, a sex scene, a love scene, romantic scene — it’s about sometimes having to not just choreograph these really hard, harrowing scenes but also making sure that everybody comes back to their bodies safely."