‘The biggest dream is never too big. I feel like I’m living proof of that’
Cynthia Erivo is still on a high. It’s five days after a performance at the Hollywood Bowl when we speak, and the sense of occasion of singing at such a famous, “bucket list” venue, coupled with the emotion of seeing thousands of people coming together to hear live music – her music – after so much time away, means she will never forget it.
“I don’t know if I could even find the words to really, truly describe what I experienced,” she says. “Having 7,000 people being brave enough to come out and listen… being in front of that amount of people, seeing people react the way they did. I still can’t believe it happened.”
Now, the actress and singer is “looking forward to continuing that, getting back to audiences and performing live, because it’s definitely the lifeblood for me”.
At 34, British star Erivo is already an Emmy winner, a Grammy winner and a Tony winner, achieving all three in 2016 and 2017 for her starring role in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple. The treble means she is *just* an Oscar away from the rare EGOT status of having all four; and she’s halfway there, receiving a nomination for best actress, for her portrayal of American abolitionist Harriet Tubman in the biopic Harriet, in 2019.
Most recently, Erivo has played her musical hero, Aretha Franklin, one of the greatest vocalists of all time, in the Genius: Aretha series chronicling five decades of the Queen of Soul’s life. It is a role that could see her add to her trophy cabinet at the upcoming 2021 Emmy Awards.
So hers is already an impressive CV, and she is about to add to it with the release of her debut album. After years of performing in character it is her chance, she tells Sky News, to connect with people “directly as me”.
“It will always feel different when you’re not playing someone else,” she says. “It allows me to show a different part of who I am. The more I can connect honestly, the better, I think.”
Titled Ch 1 Vs 1, it’s clear that Erivo sees this as just the beginning of her story. “My life isn’t over yet,” she says. “There’s lots to come, there’s lots to learn, there’s lots to write. This felt like a new beginning for me when it came to music so I wanted to mark that.”
The record is described as a 12-track journey into the star’s mental and emotional landscape – one marked by heartbreak and sadness, but also triumph and growth.
Erivo says she wants people to know she is a “fully rounded person who has thoughts and feelings just like everybody else”. That she has loved and lost. She doesn’t elaborate, but says: “Life isn’t always black and white, there are definitely grey areas, and there are things I’ve dealt with and have had to come through just like everyone else.”
Erivo played Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin in the Genius: Aretha series. Pic: National Geographic/Richard DuCree
Is that something people forget when it comes to celebrity?
“I think sometimes they do,” she says. “But that’s not necessarily just for me, I think that’s across the board. I think that celebrity or fame – for me, those words are so strange because I still don’t really associate them with myself. It makes me feel really weird to refer to myself as a celebrity because it’s not what I did this for. I think people often forget that behind all of the glitz and whatnot, is a human who deals with stuff, it’s just that often that stuff is out in the open.”
The star says when it comes to writing songs, there is nothing wrong with letting your emotions show. “I’m not afraid to be as truthful as I can be, you know. It doesn’t scare me. I guess I kind of am thrilled by being able to be vulnerable in front of people. I think the more I can do it, hopefully other people will be encouraged to be just as vulnerable.”
Erivo’s first single, The Good, was inspired by a conversation with a friend in mourning. “The phrase she said was that she just wanted to remember ‘the good’. I realised that it could be attached to both the loss of someone or a relationship or anything that forces you to think of the best of the worst of times.”
In the video, Erivo portrays a woman remembering the positive memories of a relationship with another woman that has come to an end.
“I wanted to pay homage to Black love, but often we see Black love – and most love – heterosexually,” she says. “I wanted to see something that felt normal, that showed two women in a relationship… and it wasn’t voyeuristic and it wasn’t fetishistic. It was just a normal relationship going through the ups and downs that relationships go through.“
The star, pictured performing at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago in July, says she is performing live is her ‘lifeblood’. Pic: Patrick Gipson
Born and raised in London, Erivo now lives in the US, where her profile is bigger, but still has family and friends back here.
As a star of stage and screen, and soon the charts, I ask how she feels about the government’s treatment of the arts and entertainment industry in the UK during the pandemic. The promise of £1.57bn in funding came four months into the crisis, which many argued was too late, while confirmation of a £750m insurance scheme for festivals only came earlier this month – again, too late for many events for the second year running.
Then there is the plan requiring people to prove double vaccination status when entering nightclubs and other “crowded venues” from the end of September – bizarrely announced just as restrictions were lifted in July – which has been condemned as an “absolute shambles” by industry figures.
“I think there seems to be this terrible battle that keeps going on in the UK when it comes to the arts and I don’t know why it’s difficult for the government to see that the arts are worth taking care of,” Erivo says. “Because people gain so much, everybody gains from it, even commerce gains from it. If there’s art, there’s a reason for people to visit, there’s a reason for people to see it, that means people are spending money to come and see these shows, to see the plays, the films.
“For me personally, I don’t know that anyone should be forced to have a vaccine, everyone is individual and it’s up to them.
“I do hope that we’ll finally get to a place where people deem the arts a necessary thing, because it is, and it’s often how a lot of people survive. And right now, there are people I know for sure in London who are only just getting back to work, only just getting back to shows and rehearsals. And they’ve desperately needed to be back at work and haven’t really been taken care of, and that saddens me. A lot. So I hope that that gets fixed.”
Before our time is up, I ask Erivo about another professional accomplishment that cements her status as a true multi-hyphenate in the industry. She is soon to become a published author, with her debut children’s book, Remember to Dream, Ebere, to be published in a few weeks. It tells the story of a mother and child who is encouraged to dream big.
“I am telling that story for anybody who has a dream, who thinks that things are impossible, who needs to be encouraged to keep dreaming – adults or children,” Erivo says. “I wrote it because it was the thing that I can relate to the most, the idea that the biggest dream is never too big. I feel like I’m living proof of that. I have definitely been able to live within the dreams that I’ve wanted for myself and I guess I wanted to share it with everybody else. I wanted other people to feel like they have that possibility, too.”
Cynthia Erivo’s debut album, Ch 1 Vs 1, will be released on 17 September.
Entertainment
Upskirted, assaulted, accused of faking their music skills: Why female DJs need to be ‘bulletproof’
To see Koven’s Katie Boyle perform live is beyond impressive. Hailing from Luton, she is one of the most influential women in drum ‘n’ bass today, an artist who pioneered the art of singing live while DJing.
Although she’s now been doing it for 12 years, her vast knowledge doesn’t silence the trolls online.
“There is a real bad misogyny online against women,” she says of the industry, with plenty of critics refusing to “believe they’re doing what they say they’re doing, and that’s been quite a hard thing to combat”.
Koven is a duo. In the studio, Boyle collaborates with producer Max Rowat; live, she performs and mixes alone. They have just released their second album, Moments In Everglow.
Koven (L-R): Max Rowat and Katie Boyle
While both Boyle and Rowat are equally involved in making tracks, a minority of very vocal fans still refuse to accept she does anything other than sing.
“I will always be accused of the male half doing more on anything to do with technology,” says Boyle. “The amount of comments [I get] to say, ‘she didn’t make this’. No explanation as to why they think that it is, just purely because [I’m] a woman, which is just mad.”
Koven’s Katie Boyle says she has had some ‘awful incidences’
While Boyle loves performing live, there are moments, she admits, where being one of the few women on the scene can feel unsafe.
“I’ve had some awful incidences,” she says. “I had someone run on stage and completely grab me, hand down my top, down my trousers, while I was on the stage, which is crazy because you think that’s happening in front of an audience. I mean, this guy literally had to be plied off me.
“That was when I did think, ‘I need to bring someone with me to most places’. I didn’t feel safe travelling around by myself.”
‘You get trolled for everything’
DJ Paulette. Pic: Paulette
Sadly, Boyle isn’t alone. Over a 30-year career, DJ Paulette has scaled the heights of dance music fame, playing throughout Europe, with a residency back in the day at Manchester’s Hacienda.
“Let’s just say I have two towels on my rider and it’s not just because I sweat a lot,” she jokes, miming a whack for those around her.
“I’ve spent time in DJ booths where I’ve had a skirt on and people have been taking pictures up my skirt. People think upskirting is a joke… and I got fed up with it.” Wearing shorts, she says, she still ended with “people with their hands all over me”. Now, she sticks to trousers. “But we shouldn’t have to alter the way we look for the environment that we work in.”
She admits, in order to stick it out, she’s had to bulletproof herself. “You get trolled for everything, for the way you look – if you put on weight, if you’ve lost weight.”
Not only is the discourse towards female DJs different online, she says, she has also been repeatedly told by those working in the industry that because she’s a woman, she has a sell-by date.
“I went for dinner with three guys… one of them said to me, ‘you know Paulette there is no promoter or organiser who is ever going to employ a black female DJ with grey hair’, and they all laughed.
“That was them saying to me that my career was over, and I was in my 40s. At the time, I felt crushed… I think it really does take women who have a real steel will to make their way through.”
‘I will not stop talking about it’
DJ Jaguar at the International Music Summit in Ibiza. Pic: Ben Levi Suhling
As the great and the good of the dance world gather in Ibiza for the industry’s annual International Music Summit, with dance music more popular than ever there is of course much to party about.
But for BBC Radio 1 broadcaster and DJ Jaguar, one of this year’s summit’s cohosts, some serious conversations also need to be had.
“You can get off the plane and look at the billboards around Ibiza and it’s basically white men – David Guetta, Calvin Harris, and they are incredible artists in their own right – but the women headliners, there’s barely any visibility of them, it’s awful.”
She adds: “I will not stop talking about it because it is the reality.”
Trolling and safety are also big concerns. “You’re in these green rooms, there’s a lot of people there, drinking and doing other things… and I’ve walked into green rooms where I felt incredibly uncomfortable, especially when I was a bit younger. I was on my own, it’s like 2am, and you have to watch yourself.”
Male DJs don’t have the same stories
The International Music Summit in Ibiza
She says she has female friends who have had drinks spiked when they were DJing. But her male friends? “They don’t have the same stories to tell me.”
Creamfields, arguably the UK’s biggest dance festival, is emblematic of the gender imbalance. It remains one of the least representative festivals in terms of female artists, with last year’s line-up more than 80% male.
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Laila MacKenzie, founder of Lady Of The House, a community that supports and tries to encourage more women into dance music, says the talent pipeline problem isn’t helped by the current discourse online.
“There is a real damaging factor how people can be really nasty online and really nasty in the media and how that actually may discourage and demotivate women from stepping forward into their talent,” she says.
In reality, for so many women working within dance music, the trolling can be so unpleasant that it’s drowning out the good.
“There is so much positivity and so many lovely and supportive people,” says Boyle. “But unfortunately it feels like the negative and the toxic energy is just louder sometimes.”
In October 2016, Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint – with jewellery worth millions of dollars stolen during the audacious heist in Paris.
It was the biggest robbery of an individual in France for more than 20 years – and made front pages around the world.
Now, almost a decade on, the case is finally coming to court.
Why has it taken so long? Will Kardashian give evidence? And who exactly are the “grandpa robbers” facing trial?
Here’s everything you need to know.
Kardashian at the Siran Presentation on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What happened?
Two years after Kardashian and rapper Kanye West tied the knot in an ostentatious week-long celebration spanning Paris and Florence, the Kardashian-West clan were back in the French capital for Paris Fashion Week.
Her then husband had returned to the US to pick up his Saint Pablo tour – but Kardashian, along with her sister Kourtney and various members of their entourage, remained in Paris, staying in an exclusive set of apartments so discreet they’ve been dubbed the No Address Hotel.
Nestled on Tronchet Street, just a stone’s throw from Place de l’Opéra, and close to the fashionable Avenue Montaigne, the Hotel de Pourtalès is popular with A-list stars staying in the French capital.
A stay in the Sky Penthouse, the suite occupied by Kardashian, will currently set you back about £13,000 a night.
Kardashian was staying at the Hotel de Pourtales
On the evening of 3 October, after attending a fashion show with her sister, Kardashian remained in the apartment alone while the rest of her convoy – including her bodyguard Pascal Duvier – went out for the night.
At about 2.30am, three armed men wearing ski masks and dressed as police forced their way into the apartment block – and according to investigators, they threatened the concierge at gunpoint.
Two of them are alleged to have forced the concierge to lead them to Kardashian’s suite. He later told police they yelled at him: “Where’s the rapper’s wife?”
Kardashian said she had been “dozing” on her bed when the men then entered her room.
She has said she believes her social media posts provided the alleged robbers with “a window of opportunity”.
“I was Snapchatting that I was home, and that everyone was going out,” she said in the months after the incident.
The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star vividly described the attack in a police report, as reported in the French weekly paper Le Journal du Dimanche.
“They grabbed me and took me into the hallway. They tied me up with plastic cables and taped my hands, then they put tape over my mouth and my legs.”
She said they pointed a gun at her, asking specifically for her ring and also for money.
Police guard the entrance to the Hotel de Pourtalès the day after the robbery
Kardashian says they carried her into the bathroom and put her in the bathtub. She said she was wearing only a bathrobe at the time.
She had initially thought the robbers “were terrorists who had come to kidnap me”, according to a French police report taken in New York three months after the robbery.
Kardashian told officers: “I thought I was going to die.”
According to police, the robbers – who left the room after grabbing their haul, escaped on bicycles with items estimated to be worth about $10m (£7.5m), including a $4m (£3m) 18.88-carat diamond engagement ring from West.
After they had left, Kardashian said she escaped her restraints and went to find help. After speaking to detectives, she immediately returned to the US on a private jet and later hired a completely new security team.
Kardashian shows off her $4m ring on Instagram
What was stolen?
As well as her engagement ring, Kardashian said the thieves took her large Louis Vuitton jewellery box, which she said contained “everything I owned”.
In police reports given to the French authorities at about 4.30am on the night of the alleged robbery, Kardashian listed these items as having been stolen:
• Two diamond Cartier bracelets
• A gold and diamond Jacob necklace
• Diamond earrings by Lauren Schwartz
• Yanina earrings
• Three gold Jacob necklaces
• Little bracelets, jewels and rings
• A Lauren Schwartz diamond necklace
• A necklace with six little diamonds
• A necklace with Saint spelt out in diamonds
• A cross-shaped diamond-encrusted Jacob cross
• A yellow gold Rolex watch
• Two yellow gold rings
• An iPhone 6 and a BlackBerry
Police recovered only the diamond-encrusted cross that was dropped by the robbers while leaving.
It’s likely the gold in the haul was melted down and resold, while the diamond engagement ring that is now so associated with the robbery would be far too recognisable to sell on the open market.
Kardashian at the Siran Presentation on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What will happen in court?
The hearing will begin at the Court of Appeal of Paris – the largest appeals court in France – on 28 April and is scheduled to last a month.
It will consist of a presiding judge, two professional assessors, and six main jurors.
The hearing involves more than 2,000 documents and there are four civil parties.
Kardashian at the Balenciaga show on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Who is being tried?
There were initially 12 defendants in the case, but one person has died and another has a medical condition that prevents their involvement. This means 10 people – nine men and one woman – are standing trial.
Five of them, who were all aged between 60 and 72 at the time of the incident, face armed robbery and kidnapping charges. They are:
• Yunice Abbas
• Aomar Ait Khedache
• Harminv Ait Khedache
• Didier Dubreucq
• Marc-Alexandre Boyer
Abbas, 72, has admitted his participation in the robbery. In 2021, he published a book about the robbery, titled I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian. In 2021, a court ruled he would not benefit financially from the book.
Aomar Ait Khedache, 69, known to French crime reporters as “Old Omar”, has also admitted participating in the heist but denies the prosecution’s accusation that he was the ringleader.
The remaining five defendants are charged with complicity in the heist or the unauthorised possession of a weapon. They are:
• Florus Heroui
• Gary Mader
• Christiane Glotin
• François Delaporte
• Marc Boyer
Among those, Mader was a VIP greeter who worked for the car company Kardashian used in Paris, and Heroui was a bar manager who allegedly passed on information about Kardashian’s movements.
With many of the accused now ageing and with various serious health conditions, and some having spent time in jail following their arrest, all are currently free under judicial supervision.
If found guilty, those accused of the more serious crimes could face 10 years to life imprisonment.
Kardashian at the Off-White show three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Will Kardashian give evidence?
Yes.
Lawyer Michael Rhodes said Kardashian has “tremendous appreciation and admiration for the French judicial system” and “wishes for the trial to proceed in an orderly fashion in accordance with French law and with respect for all parties to the case”.
A trainee lawyer herself, Kardashian has become a high-profile criminal justice advocate in the US in recent years.
(R-L) Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kris Jenner in the front row three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Why has it taken so long to come to court?
There was initially a manhunt after the robbery, with French police under pressure to prove that Paris’s security was not in question.
Just the year before in 2015, the capital had been shaken by terrorist attacks by Islamic militants, in which 130 people were killed, including 90 at a music event at the Bataclan theatre.
French police initially arrested 17 people in the Kardashian case in January 2017 – three months after the robbery – assisted by DNA traces found on plastic bands used to tie her wrists. Twelve people were later charged.
It was ordered to be sent to trial in 2021 – at a time when limited court proceedings were happening due to multiple COVID lockdowns, and France was holding its largest ever criminal trial over the November 2015 terror attacks.
Kardashian at the Givenchy show on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What has Kardashian said about the incident?
Kardashian has described the robbery as a “life-changing” moment. She took three weeks away from filming her reality TV show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and took a three-month break from social media.
In a March 2017 episode titled Paris, Kardashian first spoke publicly about her ordeal.
She described first hearing a noise in her apartment, and calling out, thinking it was her sister and assistant: “At that moment when there wasn’t an answer, my heart started to get really tense. Like, you know, your stomach just kind of like, knots up and you’re like, ‘OK, what’s going on?’ I knew something wasn’t quite right.”
She went on: “They asked for money. I said, ‘I don’t have any money’. They dragged me out to the hallway on top of the stairs. That’s when I saw the gun, clear as day. I was looking at the gun, looking down back at the stairs. I was like, I have a split second in my mind to make this quick decision.
“Either they’re going to shoot me in the back or if I make it [down the stairs] and the elevator does not open in time or the stairs are locked, there’s no way out.”
Three months later, she told a Forbes Power Women’s Summit she had changed her approach to posting on social media: “They had followed my moves on social media, and they knew my every move and what I had.”
She added: “It was definitely a huge, huge, huge lesson for me to not show off some of the things that I have. It was a huge lesson to me to not show off where I go.
“It’s just changed my whole life, but I think for the better.”
West and Kardashian at the Off-White show three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
In October 2020, Kardashian told US interviewer David Letterman she feared she would be raped and murdered during the heist, and that her sister had been at the forefront of her mind during the incident.
Speaking on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Kardashian said: “I kept on thinking about Kourtney, I kept on thinking she’s going to come home and I’m going to be dead in the room and she’s going to be traumatised for the rest of her life if she sees me… I thought that was my fate.”
When speaking to French police about the impact the robbery had had on her three months after it, Kardashian said: “I think that my perception of jewellery now is that I am not as attached to it as I used to be. I don’t have the same feeling about it. In fact, I even think that it has become a bit of a burden to have the responsibility of such expensive jewels.
“There is nothing of sentimental value to compare with the act of going home and finding one’s children and one’s family.”
She went on to describe Paris as “not the right place” for her, and didn’t return to the French capital for two years following the robbery.
Kardashian has since said in a 2023 episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians that she did not purchase any jewellery in the seven years following the robbery, kept no jewellery at her home and only wore items that are either borrowed or fake.
She said the realisation that material items don’t matter has made her “a completely different person in the best way”.
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