When Cynthia Erivo signed on to play Harriet Tubman, she knew she’d find herself in some challenging situations. And, as one late shoot in Virginia showed her, she was right. “We were walking through water that was 37 degrees at night,” the British actress tells The Post. “When you get out, your clothes don’t dry automatically. You’re freezing, your clothes are getting colder. . . and I sort of relished that feeling. It drew me closer to the story I wanted to tell.”
Erivo, 32, stars in “Harriet,” the first major biopic about America’s most famous female abolitionist, who escaped slavery in Maryland in 1849 and returned there again and again to help others do the same. The film is directed by Kasi Lemmons (“Black Nativity”), whose female perspective, Erivo tells The Post, was key to shaping a full portrait.
“We already know Harriet is a hero, she’s a badass. She’s able to do things most people can’t physically, but we also need to understand her as a human being, who she was, how she loved,” Erivo says. “It needed Kasi’s hand to make sure we didn’t lose out on her womanhood and her humanity.” Among the touching details she learned is that Tubman liked strawberries and fine china. “That’s something that just feels really sweet and lovely,” Erivo says.
A 2016 Tony and Grammy winner for her performance in Broadway’s “The Color Purple” — she also won raves in last year’s female-led heist thriller, “Widows” — Erivo is often mentioned as a potential youngest-ever EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony winner). Her performance in “Harriet,” with a closing track “Stand Up,” which she co-wrote and sings, makes that honor even more likely.
She also seems intent on dominating all forms of media: She’ll play Aretha Franklin next year in the Nat Geo series “Genius,” and she’s currently starring in a mesmerizing new podcast, “Carrier,” as a long-haul truck driver with an increasingly creepy and mysterious cargo.
“I love sci-fi,” Erivo says, “and I wanted to try my hand at telling a story with just my voice. Trying to paint a picture. I loved what the piece was about — how isolated this woman ends up feeling. I felt it was very cinematic.”
Meanwhile, as “Harriet” comes out this weekend, discussion has been reignited around replacing President Andrew Jackson on the US $20 bill with Tubman — a legislative move proposed, in part, by Maryland’s late congressman Elijah Cummings, but stalled by the Trump administration until at least 2026. Erivo says she thinks the arrival of Tubman’s face on currency is inevitable.
“I mean, I think it’s just a holdup,” she says. “There’s really no excuse as to why it can’t happen. It should have happened a long time ago. A woman who committed herself to helping make a better world, a better tomorrow — who’s more deserving of having her likeness on the $20 bill?
She’s also hopeful that Hollywood isn’t done with Tubman’s story. Although “Harriet” concludes around the time of her service as a spy in the Union Army, there are many more chapters to Tubman’s long life as an abolitionist, an activist and a suffragist. “Hopefully, others will be inspired to take it up,” Erivo says. “It’s definitely not a story that can be told in one film.”
Would she be up for starring in “Harriet 2”?
“If the script was great, I’d be happy to,” she says, “but mostly I just really want a lot more to be made of her. It’s a story that could go on forever.”