Estranged: Forever.
Cynthia Erivo detailed her “last conversation” with her father before their “traumatic” separation.
In her memoir Simply More, the actress writes that her father “left her alone at a London Underground station after an argument over her transport pass”.
As a guest on Tuesday’s “We Can Do Hard Things” podcast, she clarified that her father had never been a “permanent” presence in her life before the argument, but that he always paid for her transportation to and from school.
When he told the then 16-year-old girl that he “didn’t want to do that anymore,” she became “furious.”
The Tony Award winner reportedly said he didn’t know how to “not miss[her]” at the station, saying, “This is all I have to do. I don’t understand why I don’t do it now.”
At that point, a ticket taker came in and told Erivo, “You shouldn’t talk to (your father) like that.”
She answered: “Please be quiet. This is none of your business. You have no idea what’s going on here.”
The Broadway star said that after several “back and forths”, his father decided “I’ll get a travel card, but I don’t want to see him anymore.”
Erivo said: “He got a travel card and went in the opposite direction and he’s in shock. I didn’t expect him to be shocked and he was. I didn’t expect it to hurt this much but it really hurt.”
“I go to catch the train and I end up going in the wrong direction because I’m in a daze and have tears in my eyes,” she continued. “So I turned around to go the other way and saw him coming towards me. He walked past me as if we were meeting him for the first time.”
Since then, the two have “met twice” at weddings when Erivo was 25 and 35, but “have not spoken.”
“I never asked for help. I did most of the things myself because I was sure someone would leave. … I was quick to push people away.”
However, through therapy, the Oscar nominee “learned that when someone leaves, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll abandon you.”
“Sometimes they may need to leave, but that’s not unpleasant for you personally. It’s just another part of their journey and another part of your journey. It doesn’t mean everyone else will,” she explained.
Erivo told readers in her book that she now understands that her father “was never meant to be a father.”
As for her relationship with her mother and sister, the Grammy Award winner wrote that she is still “getting over” their ideas about her queerness.
Erivo, who is dating actress Lena Waithe, added: “We’ve been through a little bit of a rock lately and are finding our way together.”
