Cynthia Erivo Shares Her Guide to Skin Care and All-Brown Makeup

[playful music]

Hello, my name is Cynthia,

and I'm gonna be walking you through my very,

very extensive skincare routine

because I love skincare.

And my makeup for today

is gonna be called

all browns and you'll see why.

Here we go.

First step, cleanser

always.

I have combination skin

and it really depends on the time of the month,

to be honest.

I also use exfoliator afterwards,

this one's by Sanitas.

It's a lemon cream scrub.

So it's kinda like a pudding for your face.

Is that a thing?

This is Bioderma,

it's like an old school toner

that a lot of people use,

but I love it because it,

you can use it after makeup as well,

but you can use it after washing your face

and it cleans anything extra

and you don't need very much,

just a little bit.

These also are the only cotton pads I use.

They're Shiseido,

they're the best.

It's like putting silk on your skin.

When you're on set,

you're wearing makeup a lot

and you have to take it off

and put it on and take it off.

So your skin gets a lot of wear and tear.

It's like a calming toner.

And you're thinking,

why does she have so much to do for her face?

And does she have that much time in the world?

I don't, I make it.

But, the reason why I have so much to do

is because I was on a film a while ago

and somehow I don't know what I did,

it's like I used the wrong products on my skin

and ended up giving myself like a minor skin burn.

And I remember thinking, what am I gonna do?

And I spotted this incredible person online,

she said, just use Cetaphil and Aquaphor.

That was the only thing I could use on my skin.

And then after that,

she said to re-introduce things that would hydrate my skin

and take care of it from the inside out.

So that's what I started doing.

I started just sort of discovering what works,

what didn't work,

and it's changed over time as you do,

because you're supposed to just change the things you use

so your face doesn't get too used to everything.

I'm opening up her skin mask now

by Talika, it's anti-aging.

It's not that I think I'm getting older.

It's just that this has everything.

You know, honestly,

sometimes I get asked how do I function with nails?

The question is how would I function without them,

to be honest.

This is the new face.

It's like a micro-current.

It comes with like a hydrating serum.

I take it down to three.

This is a vitamin C,

Urban Skin RX,

really, really amazing,

specifically made for darker skin tones like mine.

I usually just do about that much.

And the last thing, B-Hydra by Drunk Elephant

goes a long, long way.

Skincare and,

and the love of it

and the routines came a lot later for me,

maybe when I was like in my late twenties, to be honest.

It's like growing up helped me like,

figure out what to do with my skin.

Nourish Max,

which I really, really like.

This is just eye cream.

This is my moisturizer, Force De Vie.

It's like an oxygen cream, as you can see,

it's already like running out.

Cause I love it.

Then we use, as you all should use sunscreen.

This one is Black girl sunscreen,

and it's really very much made for black girls like me.

The African beauty tradition is holistic.

So it's not just the face, it's the entire body.

So you take care of everything, which I do also.

So you've just seen me do all the moisturizing before,

it takes me a long time to get ready in the morning.

But I like it, it's me time.

My mom, her specific thing,

was make sure that when she was doing her makeup,

she would always use an eyeliner,

always eyeliner.

She used to take off her eyebrows

and fill them in with her eye pencil.

It was crazy,

but it works for her

and I've never thought, oh, this looks odd,

it looked really, really cool.

Which is probably why I now bleach mine

I don't really have eyebrows,

but it was always about,

the main thing was cleansing.

So making sure that you use products that would cleanse,

there's obviously a black soap, which is used often.

I sometimes put this over everything.

So I'm gonna do it today.

It's pretty nice.

Everything's sort of like locked into the skin.

That's SK II - Pitera Essence.

And you just tap it in.

We're gonna do a look that I call all grounds.

And I start with my foundation, which is Dior.

And I mix them because I have a weird sort of undertone,

which is like a gold orange, yellow thing.

That's pretty close.

The beauty industry really didn't

have very much for darker skin tones.

And over the years,

I've been lucky enough to watch as that changed.

So we're starting to see more brands

and the range of skin tones are sorta opening up,

which is really lovely,

but I've definitely experienced some

interesting moments when I've been on a set or

I remember I was doing this

like charity gala thing and we had to be made up.

And when I went to sit at this makeup artist's table,

she,

she said, I didn't need any makeup.

And I asked her if she had my shades

and then she had to admit

that she didn't bring any of my shades out.

Or she didn't bring any shades for darker skin tones at all.

She had only skin tone or shades for lighter skin tones.

And I just remember feeling really sort of forgotten about

it was a really big event.

So essentially I did my makeup by myself

and I was...

that's never a fun thing to have to like deal with.

This is just a NAS concealer.

And it took me a while to

start trusting that people would have my,

my makeup with them.

So I would always bring everything with me

just in case.

This is like a finish powder.

I always like to put this on

because it sorta brings everything together

before I put on any of the contouring powders,

cause I don't necessarily contour that much,

I just sort of enhance.

When I do my makeup,

I don't really want to look like I'm wearing that much.

It's sort of like, I woke up like this.

This is how I look, every single day.

Fenty Beauty, it's like a bronzer,

but it's an everything.

And so I use it for my eyes and for my cheeks,

look at the color, look at that.

Chocolate and all good things together.

It still feels really bold,

but essentially all I'm doing

is using the different shades of brown

to bring everything out.

I'll mix and match these two here.

This one right here.

And sometimes I'll push into the nose,

that sorta brings everything out,

which I really like.

The one thing I've learned is that

anyone who is creative

is always at their best,

when they're allowed to do what they want to do.

I think any kind of artistic expression

is a form of play for me,

it's a way for me to tell you the type of person I am.

Tell you, who I am,

just going back to this for just a tiny...

I kind of enjoy playing with all of that.

I like to highlight my eyes,

they're big eyes, so I go for them,

but it's lashes, it's eyeliner, the whole lot.

I have, I like the shape of my lips.

So I go for my lips,

lip liner, the bright lips and stuff like, the color.

And then I always will try and bring out my cheekbones

cause they're, they're a nice set of cheekbones.

So I bring them out.

Wherever you can enhance and show up

that's, that's what I do.

This is not necessarily an eyeliner.

This is a lip liner,

but it's a really cool color, it's chestnut.

So it's sort of like a reddish brown.

So I use this a lot.

Dior.

This is Boy Brow by Glossier.

And it's blonde.

I dyed my brows because my sister suggested it.

I went blonde awhile ago.

The first time I did it,

I went sort of skin tone.

And that was, I think, for the Met,

one of the Met Galas.

And then I just was like, let's just try it.

Let's just go blonde if we need to,

what have I got to lose?

And I felt really good about it.

I think people should be less cautious about

their brows.

I mean, they're,

they're part of your expression,

but why not have fun?

I think I approach most things as a,

you only live once kind of thing, so yes.

We're using this, Dior.

I think wherever we can, we should play.

I think it's why, you know,

I have piercings and my hair is blonde and

I dye my eyebrows cause I just, I wanna see,

I wanna see what it looks like.

I wanna see whether it works.

If it doesn't, it'll grow again.

It's never really the end of the world, you know.

I start with this and end with this.

When I'm getting into character,

it's like watching the makeup go on.

And then once the costume and the makeup is together,

it feels like that transformation is complete.

When I played a character called Holly Gibney

in a series called The Outsider

and her look was very much like all muted browns.

Once those things were all together,

it felt like she appeared, she came back.

That color,

and you could tell that I use this palette a lot.

And the last thing I'm gonna do are my lips

I have two chestnut pencils,

one for the eye, one for the lip.

And I try to choose colors that feel like

they just enhance them there.

And obviously when I smile,

you see this big gap here

and I've had people ask me to close it before,

but I realized that

part of my character,

part of who I am,

and part of the way you see me when I smile

is in that gap.

And there are so many people with a gap

and there are so many young girls

who have been told they should change it,

but this is not great, but actually, I think

a smile that isn't,

that has a gap in it already is perfect.

I wouldn't change it.

So I have never wanted to change it.

I never will change it.

And I don't shy away from people looking at my mouth.

So if you have a gap out there, enjoy it.

It literally is the brownest of browns.

And I use different colors all at once.

So I'll do this first.

Mac again,

that's more matte

and it probably won't get very matte

because the lip I put on was satin finish.

Sometimes I'll tap in the middle

with something that's lighter.

It's Lady Be Good, Mac.

It's like the subtlest difference.

Do we want to use a gloss?

I mean, we're here we might as well.

Glossier has a really cool one.

It's just there and it's clear, nothing in it.

Thank you for hanging out with me today,

it meant a lot.

And I hope you enjoyed this

and I hope you get a couple of your own little hints

and tricks and tips that can work for you.

Lots of love.

Bye.

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