Artwork by Zoe James-Williams
You would be forgiven for assuming that Wicked (2024) and its sequel the following year were particularly emotional films. They certainly have their weep-worthy moments: see the crescendo of Defying Gravity, or the final goodbye shared between Elphaba and Glinda. Yet, despite these scenes — and numerous others that drew tears from Wicked’s loyal fanbase — much of the internet was baffled by the frequent outbursts of emotion (whether tears, extravagant mutual effusions, intensely protective behaviour) displayed by its female leads, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, during the film’s promotional tour.
Online discourse in late 2024 was dominated by viral clips and memes from Wicked’s press circuit. In interview after interview, while being told how much the film meant to fans on a November podcast, or describing each other’s talent to yet another journalist, both Erivo and Grande seemed permanently on the verge of tears. This, along with the matching tattoos and ostentation of physical affection, struck followers of the promotion as excessive, even mawkish. In other words, as the kind of visible, unguarded feeling that invites suspicion in a celebrity context. Publications like Vulture and Metro compiled timelines of their most emotional moments, and the internet set about dissecting their friendship.
It would be reductive to dismiss Erivo and Grande’s emotions as pure performance. Both women have spoken openly about what these roles mean to them and the genuine bond formed during production. The public’s reaction — part baffled, part amused, part scornful — is better understood as a symptom of a wider shift in celebrity culture, one in which radical transparency has become its own kind of currency: the expectation that public figures will not merely be visible but will be legible, their inner lives offered up as content.
The past two decades have seen a gradual transformation in how we relate to famous people, driven largely by social media. Platforms have democratised access to celebrity life, while their monetisation logic rewards personal content being posted regularly. Daily routines, house tours, mental health struggles and other details once confined to the tabloids are now shared willingly, even strategically. Authenticity has become a badge of honour. Fans yearn for connection and relatability, and celebrities have learned to deliver it, feeding devotion that can tip into the parasocial, wherein fans develop what feels like a genuine, reciprocal relationship with someone who does not know they exist. The intimacy is real in its effects even if it is structurally one-sided: fans grieve celebrity breakups, feel personally betrayed by public missteps and speak of their favourites with the familiarity of close friends.
We clearly want our public figures to be human, and social media has made it easier than ever for them to prove it. Vulnerability, openness and tears have become a kind of currency online. Influencers and celebrities alike are expected to broadcast their imperfections (under the label of “authenticity”) to audiences that have grown suspicious of polish.
Yet, regardless of this culture of celebrated vulnerability, Erivo and Grande were widely mocked for their displays of emotion. It’s worth asking why. Both women were, after all, participating in exactly the kind of rawness that online culture supposedly prizes, and they explained their feelings repeatedly across dozens of interviews. So, what went wrong? Two factors seem most significant: oversaturation and the suspicion of performance.
The first is straightforward: Wicked‘s 2024 press tour ran for two months across podcasts, talk shows and YouTube channels. As press tours have migrated to social media, where they become infinitely clippable and shareable, avoiding the coverage became nearly impossible. Clips were pushed by the algorithm regardless of whether you’d sought them out. With that volume of exposure, the moments that stood out were inevitably the most extreme: the tears, the tattoos, the whispered declarations of mutual admiration.
Overexposure invites scrutiny, and scrutiny invites scepticism. Weeping has become its own genre online — “crying TikTok” is a well-established format in which users post themselves mid-sob, performing vulnerability for connection and engagement. Tears can humanise. But when they become frequent and algorithmic, they begin to feel less like raw displays of emotion and more like content. The question that lingered over Erivo and Grande was uncomfortable but persistent: is this real?
There are no clean answers. It is hard to question whether either Erivo or Grande were performing, but the conditions of contemporary celebrity make that distinction almost impossible to communicate. The Old Hollywood model of studied elusiveness, of Garbo-esque mystique, has been dismantled by an industry that now demands intimacy and access. Fans want the private made public, and stars oblige. Erivo and Grande were doing exactly what celebrity culture asked of them.
But the pile-on also reveals something uglier. Much of the mockery was steeped in misogyny, the implication being that women who cry too much are either hysterical or manipulative, never simply feeling things. This is the bind female celebrities in particular cannot escape: their emotional restraint reads as coldness or inaccessibility, while their emotional openness is seen as excessive or artificial.
The question of whether Erivo and Grande were “really” feeling what they appeared to feel may be, in the end, unanswerable. But the reflexive assumption that they were not, that visible feeling in women must always be explained away rather than taken at face value, is itself worth examining. Erivo and Grande weren’t punished for being inauthentic — they were punished for being “too much”.
In an online culture that claims to celebrate vulnerability, it turns out there’s still a limit – women tend to reach it first.
By Rania Sivaraj
The Camera 