Wicked Star Cynthia Erivo Delivers Shocking Performance in Peacock Murder-Mystery

British actress Cynthia Erivo hit a new level of mainstream stardom last year by playing Elphaba in the film adaptation of Wicked, but her performances — or, performances — in last week’s Season 2 premiere of Poker Face may have brought her to new heights of popularity. The actress is getting rave reviews for playing quadruplet sisters in this crime dramedy, and it’s not hard to see why. Musical theater stars are often touted as “triple threats” and multi-taskers, but even by those standards, Erivo showed an amazing range in this episode, and she wasn’t thrown off by the story’s shocking twists and turns. Read on for more about Erivo’s acclaimed performance, but fair warning: Poker Face spoilers ahead!

Fans have been waiting over two years for Poker Face to return, but Season 2, Episode 1, “The Game Is a Foot” made it all feel worth it. Our hero Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) is still on the run from mobsters and hitmen, taking odd jobs around the country to support herself in relative anonymity. While working at an apple orchard, she befriends Delia (Erivo), who reveals that she is one of four identical quadruplets. She and her sisters were child actors, sharing the lead role on a children’s show called Kid Cop: Nights, and their overbearing mother, Norma, pitted them against one another in the process.

Delia soon gets word that her mother has died, and Charlie accompanies her to the funeral. They meet her sisters Bebe and Cece, and Erivo convincingly distinguishes all three as individual characters. At the same time, we see scenes from the perspective of the fourth sister, Amber, who was the only one at home taking care of the ailing Norma. Amber learned that they had a secret fifth identical sister, Felicity, who grew up with their estranged father. Their mother had left all her money to Felicity, driving Amber into a rage.

[RELATED: 10 Highest-Rated Shows on Peacock According to Rotten Tomatoes]

Playing five separate characters would be enough of a juggling act, but the plot thickens with the mystery at play here. Amber kills Felicity and stages it to look like a suicide, intending to accept Felicity’s inheritance for herself. That means Erivo is playing a character pretending to be another character, while also playing three of the characters she is trying to convince. It’s enough to make the viewers’ heads spin, let alone the actors involved.

Erivo didn’t even make the challenge easy on herself — she played Felicity with a southern accent, which Amber then struggled to imitate. She delivered dialogue subtlety slipping in and out of each accent to tease the mystery, then convincingly played the other sisters who were being deceived. As usual, the fact that Charlie can detect lies with absolute certainty seems to complicate the investigation as often as it helps, and in the end a little bloodshed is required to get to the truth.

Guest Star’s Workload

Poker Face has made celebrity guest stars a major feature of its premise, but it hasn’t asked as much from any other performer as it did of Erivo. Critics raved about her performance(s), noting that it’s particularly impressive to keep this novelty fun and engaging across a 55-minute runtime. The audience is actually clued into what’s going on pretty early, yet that doesn’t spoil the fun going forward.

Erivo’s recent notoriety definitely helped ensure she got her due praise for this display of acting chops. Fans who saw her in Wicked or other productions may know she’s not one of five identical quintuplets, and if they didn’t, a quick search online would let them know. Erivo has been a star in the theater world since 2011, and she has been working in mainstream movies for over a decade now as well, from Bad Times at the El Royale and Harriet to the live-action Pinocchio. Still, nothing has made her as much of a household name as the family hit Wicked, and Poker Face was able to both capitalize on that stardom and show off Erivo’s range at the same time.

“The Game Is a Foot” was just the first of a three-episode premiere for Poker Face Season 2, which has been well-reviewed overall. The season continues with new episodes dropping every Thursday on Peacock through July 10th. Erivo will be back on the big screen in Wicked: For Good on November 21st in the U.S. In the meantime, Wicked is streaming now on Peacock.