‘Praying for chaos’: Cynthia Erivo wants you to sing along in the theater with ‘Wicked’

The debate over singing in the movie theater continues! This was all sparked by Wicked, the lavish theatrical adaption of the beloved Broadway show. Some audience members couldn’t resist singing along to hit songs like “Popular” and “Defying Gravity”—but wouldn’t that get annoying for other patrons? Die-hard Wicked fans argued that non-singers should wait to watch the movie on streaming, while others tried to remind people of a little thing called “social etiquette.”

Now, Wicked’s Elphaba herself, Cynthia Erivo, has weighed in.

At the Thanksgiving Parade yesterday, NBC asked Erivo which side of the debate she agreed with. She answered, “Good! I’m okay with it. We’ve spent this long singing it ourselves, it’s time for everyone else to join in.”

This was not a popular take, though. Folks on X, formerly known as Twitter, were not impressed. One wrote, “Cynthia Erivo just said she encourages people to sing in theaters I’m gonna have [an] aneurism.”

Another wrote, “I can assure you zero people need to be subjected to me trying to sing “Defying Gravity.”

Someone else simply said, “Cynthia is praying for chaos.”

Movie theaters aren’t impressed either. AMC has included a pre-show warning before showings of Wicked, which states, “No talking. No texting. No singing. No wailing. No flirting. And absolutely no name-calling.” The message is clear: You need to be considerate of other moviegoers and, let’s face it, also accept that you’re probably not as good a singer as Erivo or Ariana Grande. They’re the ones people paid to hear. Sorry, Cynthia Erivo, but you might have misjudged this one.

Erivo isn’t the only celebrity who’s stated their approval of theater singing during this past week. Moana 2, another highly anticipated musical, came out on November 27. When the BBC asked star Dwayne Johnson how he felt about singing in a movie theater, he answered, “Sing! You’ve paid your hard-earned money for a ticket, and you’ve gone into a musical, and you’re into it. Sing.” Yeah, but other people also paid their hard-earned money for a ticket and they may not want to hear strangers butcher their favorite tunes!

If you really, really, really want to sing the Wicked songs in a theater, though, a sing-along version of Wicked is coming out on December 25 anyway. So really, everyone wins this debate.