Cynthia Erivo reveals estrangement from her family

In her new memoir, “Wicked” star star Cynthia Erivo, 38, opens up being abandoned by her father as a teen.

“I was 16 when he left me, alone, in a London underground station after an argument about a transit pass,” she writes in “Simply More: A Book for Anyone Who’s Been Told They’re Simply Too Much” (Flatiron Books, out today). They haven’t spoken since.

She spent years desperate to prove her worth to him, but has finally made peace with his leaving.

“I have come to understand he was never meant to be a dad,” she writes.

Erivo is close with her mother and sister, but she says it’s taken them some time to accept her being queer.

It’s “a territory we’re still navigating,” the Tony award winner writes. As a teen, she realized she was attracted to both men and women, but an unrequited crush on another girl in high school left her scurrying back into the closet.

It wasn’t until she was in drama school that she began asking trusted friends “a bit about what I was feeling.”

Erivo has been in a relationship with actress and producer Lena Waithe since 2022, but at the time, she was exclusively dating men.

“I don’t think I dated a woman until my late twenties,” she writes.

The “Genius: Aretha” star slowly began to “see who I was and began to accept myself. To own myself fully.”

But she’s had to tread cautiously with her family.

“My queerness goes against the grain of what many people think is right and proper,” she writes. “I think my mother is worried about what others think … I see her working to reconcile the idea of what she had in her head for me, her plans for me, and then working to let go of those plans. I’m aware that this must be hard.”

The Oscar nominee shares that it’s taken her sister even “longer” to accept Erivo’s sexuality. “But we’ve recently come over a bit of a hump, finding our way toward each other.”

Erivo came out publicly as bisexual in a 2022 British Vogue interview and acknowledged that it took her a long time to speak out.

“[LGBTQ+ people] still feel the need to be constantly justifying why we deserve to be treated as equal beings, when really the only difference is that we love differently and we express ourselves differently,” she said.

Being abandoned by her father has left her with lasting scars.

Years back, she was performing at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. At the last minute, her then-manager brought by a bunch of random friends to watch her rehearse.

She exploded with rage. “I was furious, I don’t think I’ve ever had an outburst like that before or since. To be honest, I even scared myself. I utterly blacked out with rage.’

Friends diffused the situation, the manager left, and she never saw him again. He sent her an email resigning and chastising her. 

As her book’s subtitle states, Erivo is well aware that she can be “too much” for some people but she has to be true to herself.

It’s taxing to be “our most authentic and true selves hour after hour, day after day,” she admits, but it’s the “most rewarding way to live.”