{"id":946014,"date":"2026-10-25T18:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T18:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/946014\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T18:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T18:36:09","slug":"snl-uk-goes-nollywood-as-cynthia-erivo-parodies-nigerian-wicked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/946014\/","title":{"rendered":"SNL UK goes Nollywood as Cynthia Erivo parodies Nigerian Wicked"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cynthia Erivo<\/a> recently made news by proclaiming back in May that she is pretty much over the whole Wicked thing<\/a>. But that didn\u2019t stop the Prima Facie<\/a> star from transporting herself back to Oz during Saturday\u2019s SNL UK. Well, to LagOZ anyway, as Erivo starred in a sketch elaborately spoofing both the Wicked<\/a> films and the gloriously inept pleasures of the worst of Nollywood in \u201cNigerian Wicked.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For those not in the know, Nollywood<\/a> is the informal name given to the astoundingly prolific Nigerian film industry which, while producing some genuine classics in world cinema, is perhaps best known amongst the YouTube crowd for its output of direct-to-video, no-budget, so-bad-they\u2019re-good flicks. (The intro parodies the industry\u2019s long line of unlicensed, very unauthorized pop culture pilferings<\/a> with action-packed box art for the Nollywood action thriller Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s Revenge, among others.) \u201cNigerian Wicked\u201d is one of those, with Erivo swapping roles as a handbag-obsessed Glinda and cast member Ayoade Bamgboye taking the Erivo\u2019s Wicked role as an indifferently green-slathered Elphaba as they hit the road so the Wizard can give Elphaba that \u201cgravity-defying\u201d BBL she\u2019s dreaming of.<\/p>\n

The sketch is filled with in-camera magic spell effects, awkward melodrama (\u201cGlinda doesn\u2019t like egg, so their relationship is very strained\u201d the narrator helpfully explains after one witch-on-witch standoff), and some of that trembling sexual tension Wicked fans have been shipping for so long. (Even if the film\u2019s \u201cNigerian Wicked: LGBTQ!\u201d tagline doesn\u2019t go much beyond an abrupt face-slap.) It\u2019s a pitch-perfect distillation of a kind of film the Nigerian-descended Erivo clearly knows very well, as she\u2019s credited for her Wicked reprise under her full birth name, Cynthia Chinasaokwu Onyedinmanasu Owezuke Amarachukwu Echimino Erivo.<\/p>\n

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