A string of recent Wicked: For Good press interviews has gone viral, not for what its costars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo said, but for the fact that both women cried on camera. Their visible emotion has set off a wave of commentary across social platforms. Research shows women cry more often than men, yet we rarely witness it because women and men are taught early to hide emotion, particularly in professional settings.
As Grande and Erivo make the rounds promoting Wicked: For Good, there have been several emotional moments. For example, Grande grew tearful in an ET interview as she explained why she chose to use her full name, Ariana Grande-Butera, in the film’s credits, a decision she framed as a way to reconnect with her childhood. In the same interview, Erivo’s eyes filled when ET’s Nischelle Turner, a Black woman who grew up in rural Missouri, reflected on how profoundly Erivo’s portrayal of Elphaba captures the feeling of not belonging. Turner suggested that Erivo brought her own lived experiences of otherness to the character, and Erivo became visibly moved. The women weren’t sobbing; they just teared up a bit.
And it’s not just Erivo and Grande who are crying; the show hosts were teary-eyed too. Nischelle Turner cried during the ET interview, and the women of The View teared up during an interview with Erivo as well.
Influencers have fixated on why these interviews are so emotional, but they’re asking the wrong question. The real issue isn’t why Grande and Erivo are crying; it’s why we find women’s emotions so startling in the first place. As Grande put it to ET‘s Denny Directo, “Why does emotional availability scare you so?”
Tears are a natural human response, yet women are conditioned to hide them, especially in professional settings. And for Grande and Erivo, a film press tour is their workplace. So when emotions surface in this setting, it challenges our expectations about how women should behave.
The reality is that crying at work remains heavily penalized. A 2023 survey of more than 3200 workers by Accountemps found 70% thought there were consequences to crying at work. This is particularly problematic for women, since researchers report “women cry more frequently, for more reasons, and in more contexts than men in all countries where relevant data have been collected.”
When Tears Trigger Backlash At Work
Most of us may have a sense that crying at work is discouraged, but researchers have found that context matters. Another study, which examined interviews with 65 professional employees, found that people judge crying at work differently depending on when it occurs and how disruptive it is. When someone cries in public, like tearing up in the middle of a formal meeting or performance review, coworkers tend to make harsher, more personal judgments. They’re more likely to see the crier as unprofessional, overly emotional or even manipulative.
But when crying happens in a more private context, it’s deemed more acceptable. For example, if after a tough performance review an employee finds private space to shed tears, coworkers interpret the crying much more generously. In those cases, they tend to assume the person is simply dealing with a difficult situation, not lacking control.
Crying multiple times at work can have even more dire career consequences. In the same interviews, some employees mentioned coworkers who were labeled “frequent criers,” and they noted that these employees were severely limited in their advancement opportunities. “Frequent criers may be evaluated differently than infrequent criers in that they are pre-categorized in a negative way, and any crying event that occurs merely serves to verify their existing categorization,” the researchers conclude in their paper. Erivo and Grande clearly seem to be frequent criers.
In the case of Erivo and Grande, some fans may have interpreted their tears as inauthentic and manipulative—perhaps trying to make the film seem deeper than it really is. Researchers have found that people are more likely to be angry when they feel that they are being manipulated by tears. When people think tears are being used in bad faith, women criers are penalized even more than men. Observers become angrier and less empathetic toward a woman whose tears are perceived as manipulative, because such behavior violates the stereotype that women should be warm, caring, and sincere.
And there can be serious career consequences of insincere crying as well. When coworkers believe a woman’s tears are insincere, she’ll also receive worse performance evaluations and significantly less support.
Should Women Cry At Work?
Generally, the research suggests that crying can have negative consequences at work. And, although it’s a perfectly natural response, it’s likely not the best move for your career. Of course, neither Erivo nor Grande is likely to see their careers harmed by a few emotional moments on a press tour. They operate in an industry that often makes room for vulnerability, especially from big stars.
The reaction to Grande and Erivo isn’t the first time a woman’s brief show of emotion has gone viral. Hillary Clinton’s single moment of “tearing up” during her 2008 run for the Democratic presidential nomination set off a debate about whether a woman showing emotion could still be a credible commander-in-chief. As Maureen Dowd noted in The New York Times, Clinton’s tears pushed her into a damage-control tour. “You know, I actually have emotions,” Clinton told CNN’s John Roberts. “I know that there are some people who doubt that.” According to Dowd, Clinton told Access Hollywood, “If you get too emotional, that undercuts you,” she said. “A man can cry; we know that. Lots of our leaders have cried. But a woman, it’s a different kind of dynamic.”
What’s surprising about the public response to Grande, Erivo, and Clinton is how conditioned we are to see women’s tears as a problem to solve or a flaw to fix. Clinton faced it in 2008, and women everywhere face it today. But these viral moments give us an opportunity to reexamine the rules. If we stop treating women’s and men’s emotional expression as a liability and start treating it as a normal part of human behavior, we create workplaces that judge people by their work, not their tears.