The duo gave a nod to Erivo and Ariana Grande’s ‘Wicked’ press tour just before Erivo emerged onstage to kick off her hosting duties

Oprah Winfrey and Cynthia Erivo at the 78th Tony Awards in New York City on June 8, 2025.Credit : CBS

NEED TO KNOW

Cynthia Erivo and Oprah Winfrey recreated Erivo and Ariana Grande’s viral “holding space” Wicked press tour meme at the 2025 Tony Awards on Sunday, June 8
“The only thing you need to do is just be yourself,” Winfrey told Erivo, before Erivo grasped her finger and the two women smiled knowingly
Erivo is hosting the ceremony, airing live now from New York City’s Radio City Music Hall on CBS and Paramount+

Cynthia Erivo is holding space for Oprah Winfrey at the 2025 Tony Awards.

The actress and singer, 38, began the ceremony at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on Sunday, June 8, with a sequence that showed her emerging from her dressing room on her way to the stage to host — only to be accosted by several people giving her tips on how to stage her opening number.

The final person Erivo ran into before her big entrance? None other than icon Winfrey, 71, who gave her a useful pep talk.

“What do you do when everyone is telling you what you need to do?” Erivo asked Winfrey, who replied, “Forget about them, babe! The only thing you need to do is just be yourself.”

The two women then smiled knowingly after Winfrey stuck out her right index finger, which Erivo grasped — a cheeky nod to the viral “holding space” moment between Erivo and her Wicked costar Ariana Grande that came out of their Wicked press tour last fall.

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In the original interview that went viral in November 2024, Out journalist Tracy Gilchrist told Erivo and Grande, 31, that the LGBTQ+ community was connecting with and “holding space with” the lyrics of “Defying Gravity.”

In an interview with Variety the following month, Grande said that in that moment, Erivo looked like she might cry. So Grande provided support to her friend the only way she could think of in the moment: clutching Erivo’s index finger and tapping her long acrylic nail.

Grande recalled of the interview to Variety, “[Gilchrist] said something that meant something to her, then it meant something totally different to [Erivo], and then she tried to kind of get somewhere else. I remember in the moment asking myself, ‘Am I okay? Did I not hear something?’ … because she looks like she was about to cry again.”

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Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in fall 2024.Kevin Mazur/Kevin Mazur/Getty;outmagazine/Instagram

The “Thank U, Next” singer then shared that she decided to grab Erivo’s finger at that moment “because I [thought] you might need something.”

“And I don’t know what the tapping was about,” Grande continued, as Erivo jokingly added, “Tension, tension.”

Grande then reflected on all the memes about the interview that were shared on social media, stating that they were “so beautiful.”

“I feel really relieved that the world had the same experience with this moment that I did, because I felt like, ‘Oh I’m not broken.’ The best thing to is to really hold space with that,” she joked.

See PEOPLE’s full coverage of the 78th annual Tony Awards at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, airing now on CBS and Paramount+.