Words: Steven MacKenzie
In Drift, Cynthia Erivo plays Jacqueline, a Liberian refugee trying to piece her life back together on a Greek island after experiencing unspeakable trauma. A tourist asks her: “How did you get here?” “Same as everyone else,” Jacqueline responds, “Plane, ferry, boat. Luck.”
It’s more than luck that has taken Erivo to Hollywood, where she’s speaking to The Big Issue. It’s a couple of days after the Oscars where Erivo – a two-time nominee herself – presented awards with Ariana Grande, her co-star from the feverishly anticipated adaptation of stage smash Wicked.
“There’s a little bit of luck but I definitely used a plane to get here,” she smiles. “It’s having the curiosity to pick different things that challenge me and to make brave choices.”
It’s more than just this too.
Drift is a film that’s both ferociously brave to make, but intensely personal too. Erivo first read the script in 2015 when starring in The Color Purple on Broadway, for which she’d win a Tony Award (the year Hamilton swept most of the other categories). Bill Paxton, better known for his work in front of the camera, was attached to direct. After his death in 2017, Erivo was determined to see the project through to completion.
She says: “I cared about the way her story was told. I was curious about her incessant and determined nature and need to survive. If a person can go through all of this and keep finding ways to make it to the next day, even when she’s petrified, I am curious about what makes that person tick – because it’s not the same as anyone else.”
The script may be close to a decade old, based on the book A Marker To Measure Drift by Alexander Maksik, set in the early years of this century, but as the migrant crisis continues it’s more relevant than ever today.
“But I think it’s always going to be relevant,” Erivo says. “It will always be something that we need to step back and take a look at – the way we treat people who are displaced, who are running, who need safety and how we ignore and dehumanise them.”
Living in the character of Jacqueline gave Erivo new perspective on the journey her mother Edith took as a teenager from Nigeria to the UK during the Biafran War. “Nothing has ever stopped my mum from doing the things she wants to do. Nothing. And I think it stems from that moment in her life. She kept saying [to me] whatever I wanted to be, I could be. I just had to work hard for it. And that adage has never left me.”
