“Five personalities, 11 days. Go,” says Cynthia Erivo. That was the mission that the Wicked star got from Natasha Lyonne when she was cast as five different roles on the season premiere of Lyonne’s Peacock series, Poker Face.
In the episode, titled “The Game is a Foot,” Erivo plays not one, not two, but a grand total of five different sisters—Amber, Bebe, Cece, Delia, and a secret fifth sister, Felicity— former child stars who each went down wildly different paths. Years after their days starring on Kid Cop, Amber’s now a failed artist, Bebe a DJ, Cece a faux-French grad student, Delia an apple picker, and Felicity Price a successful artist living off the grid. Erivo had the gargantuan task of bringing each of these eccentric sisters to life.
“I wanted to figure out what it would be like to compartmentalize and play different characters all at once,” Erivo says. “To see how that felt, and to challenge myself to see if it was possible.”
Erivo began by focusing on each sister’s aesthetic reality, getting granular about their personal style. “Style-wise, hair-wise, and makeup-wise—what’s the journey they’ve been on?” Erivo remembers thinking.
To help differentiate the sisters in her head, Erivo color-coded her script so she knew who was speaking to whom. “The script looked insane,” she said. But even the color-coding didn’t make things that much easier. “You’re moving a mile a minute,” she says. “You’re going very, very fast, because you’re switching back and forth throughout the whole entire day.”
Below, Erivo breaks down her specific approach to each of the five sisters, from their hair to their voice and everything in between.
Vanity Fair: How did you approach creating five distinct, nuanced characters that are also siblings?
Cynthia Erivo: I needed to know who each person was. As I read the script, they revealed themselves. One of them is sort of, like, over everything. One is a complete airhead and is in her own world. I knew that I wanted one to feel really grounded. And then our sweet Amber, who is totally unhinged but is trying to hold it together. Each one had a tic that was different to the other. Once I knew what it was, I could build from there.
The most helpful thing was finding out what they would wear—finding out what their personality was like within those costumes. The look, the hair, the makeup, all of those sorts of things, keep people very, very specific. Underneath the base of it all is my face. So, they would be similar, they would be twins, but they would each be very separate and individual.
How did you figure out the style for each of the sisters?
Each one of them had a story to tell with the way they looked, with the wigs they wore, with the hair they had. CeCe isn’t French, but wants to be. I felt, in my mind, that she was very, very vain. So the hair was very, very proper. It’s very quaffed, long but wavy. The makeup is just so, as clean and tidy as possible. The dark lipstick is just right.
Bebe’s more adventurous. So you had the bleached eyebrows, and the dreads, and the gold lipstick, and the makeup. I felt like she was one of those rave kids. She became a rave kid after her Kid Cop time. Amber is just trying to figure it out. She’s the little hair-brained artist that doesn’t really have a style of her own. Her hair, it’s grown, and it’s long, and it’s an Afro.
Then you have Felicity, who ends up cutting it all off. She has no need for long hair. But she’s still very aware. So her makeup best be done. She has her piercings, and she has the cut hair, but it’s still less maintenance than everybody else. Delia, who’s just trying to keep it together, you don’t really ever see her hair. It’s always under her hat. She’s just practical.
How did you figure out each character’s voice?
I wanted to make sure that each one of them had a tune. Amber’s pitched up higher: it’s like her feet are never on the ground. She’s always wanting something. She doesn’t quite know who she is. She’s always trying to please. It’s that interesting thing that we do with our voices when we don’t want to offend. We send it up into the head, because we don’t want to offend. And Amber is that.
Whereas someone like CeCe— she’s so in her body. She’s so “I’m French, I don’t want to please everybody. I want to be here as someone who’s very chic.” Someone that takes her time with the way she says things.
Delia is so on the ground because she has to be. There isn’t really any pretense around her. It just is what it is. She’s very connected to who she is. And that goes for Felicity, who is even deeper because she knows who she is. She isn’t trying to please. In fact, she lives on her own, so there is no one to please. There’s no one around her, a lot of the time. She’s given up a bunch of things to find out who she is.
And then you have Bebe, who is like air. It’s very valley girl. It’s like, “I don’t really care. I’m sort of bored by everything.”
Which of the sisters was your favorite to play?
I loved Delia because she was so sweet. You can’t help but root for her. You really want her to win. But those two silly sisters, CeCe and Bebe, are just ridiculous. I loved playing them because they’re so far away from me. They’re just so diametrically opposed to who I am that being in those characters and those bodies just felt really fun and crazy. I would love to explore what they become, and what their lives are. I can’t imagine that they’re not fun.
What was it like working with Natasha?
She was so sweet. She would be in the room, and I would leave and then come back as someone else. She’d just be like, “This is insane, to see you come in and fully be the other person.” The idea that she was always able to interact with whichever new character came into the room, just so openly and easily, was so much fun. It was really, really cool to be able to work with someone who had that much room for that many characters coming from one person. We still joke about it today, she and I. Like, “What the heck? How did that even happen? How did it get pulled off?”
What was it like diving into comedy?
It was nice to stretch the comedy chops. It was nice to play in that space, because I haven’t really had the opportunity to do that. And it was nice to feel out the style. I didn’t realize that sort of vaudevillian, broad farce, was going to work. It felt really good and really natural to do. It was great.
You are a very talented artist, but you had to play a particularly bad artist in Amber. What was that like for you?
I know. I felt so bad for her. You have to have real empathy, because I don’t think she thinks she’s a bad artist. I think she thinks she’s amazing. I think she thinks what she’s doing is wonderful. That’s where you have to have empathy for her, because you know it’s absolutely horrific, terrible. But she’s put so much energy into them, and she believes that she is just as good as Felicity, and should have just as much praise for her work. She’s really dedicated to all those spangles. She thinks they have just as much of a place in the world as her art. And it’s so deeply sad. Like, “Poor little Amber.”
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
-
Molly Jong-Fast Reflects on Her Mother’s Dementia and the Fleeting Nature of Fame
-
See All the Fashion, Outfits, and Looks From the 2025 Met Gala Red Carpet
-
Hawk Tuah Opens Up About Her Crypto Scandal
-
Plus, Who Made VF’s Met Gala Best-Dressed List?
-
The Dystopian Coming-of-Age Story Stephen King Considered Too “Merciless” to Film
-
Wes Anderson’s Next Breakout Star Just So Happens to Be Kate Winslet’s Daughter
-
Alan Alda on Life With Parkinson’s, M*A*S*H, and Carol Burnett
-
Why Are Americans So Obsessed With Protein? Blame MAGA.
-
All of Quentin Tarantino’s Movies Ranked
-
Elon Musk’s 14 Children and Their Mothers (That We Know Of)
-
From the Archive: The Re-Happening of Diana Ross
The post Cynthia Erivo Went All In to Create Five Distinct Characters in ‘Poker Face’: “The Script Looked Insane” appeared first on Vanity Fair.
