Cynthia Erivo Flips the Script as Glinda in SNL U.K.'s 'Nigerian Wicked'

Having spent much of the past year embodying the green-skinned gravity-defier at the center of Jon M. Chu's Wicked, Cynthia Erivo demonstrated genuine comedic range when she stepped behind the hosting desk for SNL U.K. — and, crucially, stepped into a very different pair of heels. The resulting sketch, "Nigerian Wicked," is the kind of affectionate genre send-up that works precisely because its lead performer understands the source material from the inside out.

Swapping Emerald for Lagos

According to Variety, the sketch recasts the beloved Broadway-born story through a Nollywood lens, complete with lo-fi production aesthetics and the heightened melodrama that defines that beloved Nigerian film tradition. Erivo, trading her signature Elphaba silhouette for a blonde wig and a pink velour tracksuit, plays Glinda opposite Ayoade Bamgboye's Elphaba. Their destination is not the Emerald City of Oz lore but rather the Wizard of LagOz — a nod both to Lagos and to the kind of playful linguistic invention that great parody demands.

The sketch's comedic architecture is confident. Where the original musical channels the friction between Glinda and Elphaba into the caustic duet "What Is This Feeling," the Nollywood version dispenses with the vocal pyrotechnics entirely: Glinda simply slaps Elphaba across the face. Bamgboye's wounded "Glinda, you slapped me!" is met with Erivo's imperious reply that the offense was warranted on grounds of classlessness — a line delivery that suggests Erivo has a sharper instinct for comic timing than her dramatic résumé might lead audiences to expect.

Birkin Bags, Fake Watches, and a Very Broke Wizard

The sketch builds its gags with a pleasing internal logic. A reimagined makeover sequence has Elphaba fretting over costs, only for Glinda to promise everything will be resolved once the Wizard intervenes. The pair's wish list upon reaching the "emerald, white and emerald city" is suitably absurd: Glinda covets a Birkin bag while Elphaba seeks a "skinny BBL." The Wizard, voiced by Hammed Animashaun, delivers the sketch's most quotable line — "She wants a BBL that defies gravity!" — which manages to simultaneously spoof Elphaba's signature anthem and the aspirational consumerism running through both Oz mythology and contemporary pop culture.

The Wizard himself, of course, turns out to be broke. Erivo's Glinda clocks his counterfeit watch immediately — "That's a nolex" — a small detail that lands as one of the sketch's sharpest observations about the gap between projected power and financial reality, a theme as resonant in Nollywood narratives as it is in the original Wicked.

A Performer Comfortable Across Registers

For anyone tracking Cynthia Erivo's broader cultural presence over the past season, this SNL U.K. appearance reinforces a portrait of an artist who refuses to be confined by expectation. The Wicked film earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, situating her among a lineage of performers — from Judy Garland to Idina Menzel — who have found career-defining moments in this particular story's universe. That she can then return to the same material as a comic foil, poking fun at its conventions from the opposite character's perspective, speaks to a sophistication about her own public image.

The sketch's closing beat — the two characters dramatically leaning in for a kiss before an explosion effect swallows the screen — also winks knowingly at the substantial online community that has long "shipped" Glinda and Elphaba, folding fan-culture awareness directly into the comedy. It is the kind of meta-textual gesture that sketch writing at its best deploys with precision rather than desperation.

For those curious about Erivo's range beyond the stage and screen, her recent performance work has been equally scrutinized, suggesting audiences and critics alike are paying close attention to every register she chooses to inhabit. "Nigerian Wicked" is a welcome reminder that irreverence, wielded by the right performer, is its own form of craft.

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