Cynthia Erivo felt “really ready” to shoot her Defying Gravity musical number for Wicked after a six-month pause for the actors’ strike.

The British actress had filmed everything up until her character Elphaba’s signature ballad when the production paused for six months due to the actors’ strike last year.

While the strike delayed the shoot, Erivo felt like the time off helped her process what she had already filmed and return to the set better prepared for the vocally demanding song.

“We are at our bones at this point. Skin rubbed to the bone. And I felt like that six months gave me time to process all of the things that had happened so that I could use the things that I had experienced to finally really tell the story of what it is to defy gravity,” Erivo said during a Q&A in Los Angeles, reports IndieWire. “So when we got there, I was really ready and the universe said, ‘No, you know, sit down, have a cold, have a fever, and I was out for a week when we came back.”

Despite feeling mentally prepared for her big number, the Widows actress had to delay it once again due to illness – so when the time finally came to shoot the sequence, Erivo was more than ready.

“I was so ready to rule those words and mean them, because I was able to put together the things I had experienced in the film and the things I had experienced in my life to be able to say, ‘I’m defying gravity,'” said Erivo.

Defying Gravity was famously sung by Idina Menzel, the original Elphaba, in the Broadway cast recording.

The first part of Wicked will be released in cinemas on 22 November.

© Cover Media