‘Wicked’ Star Cynthia Erivo Says Her Dream Role Is To Play X-Men Icon Storm In The MCU: “I Think We Haven’t Uncovered How Grand She Is And All Of That Inner Turmoil That She Has”
In all-but-officially throwing her name into the running for the chance to play the mutant heroine, Wicked star Cynthia Erivo recently revealed that when it comes to her ‘dream role’, she would very much live to trade in her broomstick for an X-gene and play the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s live-action version of the X-Men’s resident weather manipulator, Ororo ‘Storm’ Munroe.
Erivo, who plays the outcast Elphaba in John Chu’s silver screen take on the Wizard of Oz-derived musical duology, shared her hopes towards joining Xavier’s School for Gifted Mutants while giving a quick red-carpet interview to the National Board of Review ahead of the non-profit organization’s annual awards ceremony, as held this year on January 7th.
Asked by the NBR interviewer during their short time together as to whether there was “another dream role you want to manifest, right here, right now?”, the British-born Broadway-star-turned-Hollywood-actor asserted, “I really want to play Storm.”
“I know it sounds frivolous,” she told her host, “but I think we haven’t uncovered how grand she is and all of that inner turmoil that she has. So I think that there’ might be a world in which we could, you know, do something like that.”
While this brief interview is far from any sort of official confirmation that Erivo is currently engaged in any sort of negotiations with Disney and Marvel Studios, in the world of Hollywood, such a public declaration can essentially be inferred as a non-direct way for a given actor to ‘throw their hat into the ring’ for a role.
But interestingly, whenever an actress, whether Erivo or otherwise, is cast to portray the MCU’s version of Storm, they would be not only the third actress to play the Kenyan orphan in live-action proper, but actually the second to do so in the cinematic universe.
As most audiences will no doubt remember, Storm was first brought to life by Halle Berry, who after debuting in the role in the first X-Men film would go on to portray her in X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, and X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Following the franchise’s rebooting in Days of Future Past, Alexandra Shipp would be the next actress chosen to wield the weather on behalf of the mutant superhero team, doing so in X-Men: Apocalypse, Deadpool 2, and Dark Phoenix, her appearances in the last two being little more than brief cameos.
(While Storm was also portrayed by April Elleston Enahoro in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and an unknown actress in X-Men: First Class, the former’s entire appearance was cut from the film, while the latter’s was so brief that, as noted, the identity of the young woman who played her is now unknown. As such, they are considered outliers and not proper appearances).
And though the X-Men and mutantkind at large have yet to officially debut within the MCU (Kamala Khan and Namor are so far the universe’s only confirmed mutants, as revealed in Ms. Marvel and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, respectively), Storm is the lone exception, having recently made her debut in the third and final season of What If…?
Voiced by her X-Men: The Animated Series/X-Men ’97 voice actor Alison Sealy-Smith and unleashing her lightning in the series’ final two episodes ‘What If…the Watcher Disappeared?‘ and ‘What If…What If?”, this version of Storm is admittedly not the version who will eventually come to reside on the main Earth-199999 timeline (despite how badly Kevin Feige wishes, no one in their right mind will ever refer to it as Earth-616).
Rather, she is a Mjolnir-worthy-and-wielding variant who, after becoming displaced from her own timeline, joins with fellow multiversal nomads Captain Carter, Kahhhori, and Byrdie to stop universal incursions as the Guardians of the Multiverse.
While Erivo’s chances at landing the role of Storm are currently elevated due to the success of Wicked, one wonders if being cast as such a popular comic book character is something she actually wants.
After all, if there’s one thing comic book fans love doing, it’s editing pictures of their favorite characters’ live-actions depictions in order to depict them in alternate costumes or bring them more in-line with their original appearances – and given her over-the-top and ballistic response to Wicked fans’ harmless attempts to make the film poster look more like the one used for the original Broadway play, it’s likely that seeing far more people playing around with her theoretical version of Storm may make her spontaneously combust.
More About:Movies
Read this Next
