Cynthia Erivo Unveils the Bad Fairies Cast From the Hollywood Bowl Stage: Kylie Minogue, Jonathan Groff and Catherine Tate Join

Cynthia Erivo did not send out a press release and wait for the internet to notice. She stood on the Hollywood Bowl stage on Thursday night, October 15, in the middle of her one-night-only concert Let Me Sing to You, and told the audience herself: Kylie Minogue, Jonathan Groff and Catherine Tate are joining the voice cast of Bad Fairies, the original animated musical comedy from Warner Bros. Pictures Animation and Locksmith Animation. According to BusinessWire, which carried the studios' official announcement the same evening, Minogue will voice Clowder, the Cat Witch; Groff will voice Robin Goodfellow; and Tate will voice the Fairy Gothmother. Erivo leads the film as Jayne Staplegun, the trailblazing fairy at the center of a gang that would rather break the rules than follow them.

A reveal staged like a musical number

The announcement was built into the show. BusinessWire reported that the second half of the concert opened with an orchestral piece built on "Hard to Believe," Jayne's song from the film, giving the Bowl audience the first public taste of music written for the movie. Erivo then introduced Jayne to the crowd, announced Groff and Tate, and saved the biggest reaction for last: Minogue was sitting in the audience, and Erivo celebrated her from the stage as the final addition of the night, sharing a hug with the pop star as the crowd put the pieces together. TheWrap, which also covered the reveal, described the film as the story of a delightfully subversive gang of fairies shaking up their magical world — a premise the Thursday-night staging seemed designed to underline, with the casting news delivered as performance rather than paperwork.

Three very different kinds of star power

The new names cover three corners of entertainment at once. Minogue brings a pop career that has run from the late 1980s to her recent Tension era, and her casting as a Cat Witch gives the film a genuine music headliner opposite Erivo. Groff, a Tony Award winner known to screen audiences from Hamilton, Mindhunter and the Frozen films, takes on Robin Goodfellow — the name Shakespeare gave to Puck, folklore's most famous troublemaker, which suits a film about fairies who misbehave on purpose. Tate, a fixture of British comedy from The Catherine Tate Show to Doctor Who, voices the Fairy Gothmother, a godmother figure recast with a darker wardrobe and, presumably, a sharper tongue. Bill Damaschke, president of Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, said in the studios' statement that the new arrivals give the production a cast as bold and joyful as the film itself, while Locksmith Animation CEO Natalie Fischer called Erivo's voice the soul of the film since she came on board.

The cast already in place

Thursday's trio completes a lineup that has been assembling for a year. Deadline reported in October 2025 that Erivo would star in the film, and Deadline reported the following month that Ncuti Gatwa had joined as Butterwort. Serrana Su-Ling Bliss as Fei Chang, James Acaster as Stickers and veteran voice actor Dee Bradley Baker as Groundbeef were added in June 2026, in casting reported out of the Annecy festival. With Minogue, Groff and Tate now aboard, the announced cast stands at eight named performers, and the studios described the film's ensemble as rounded out by the Bowl announcement.

The team behind the fairies

Bad Fairies is directed by Megan Nicole Dong, the creator of Netflix's animated musical series Centaurworld, and co-directed by Olivier Staphylas, who was a head of character animation on Wish Dragon. The original screenplay is by Deborah Frances-White. The songs come from Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, the Tony Award-winning duo behind Six: The Musical, while Isabella "Machine" Summers of Florence + The Machine is composing the score and contributing to the songs. Ian Eisendrath, whose recent credits include KPop Demon Hunters, is executive music producer, and Carolyn Soper produces. The film is set in contemporary London, production is underway in London, and DNEG Animation is serving as the digital animation partner. It is the first feature to emerge from the first-look deal between Warner Bros. Pictures Animation and Locksmith Animation, and Warner Bros. Pictures will release it in theaters on May 21, 2027.

The pedigree matters, because Bad Fairies is a statement of intent for both partners. Locksmith Animation, the London studio co-founded by Sarah Smith, built its name on Ron's Gone Wrong in 2021 and followed it with That Christmas — the two earlier Locksmith films that DNEG Animation also partnered on, according to the project's production history. For Warner Bros. Pictures Animation under Damaschke, an original musical with songs by the Six team is a swing at the kind of all-ages event film the division has been rebuilding toward, and Thursday's announcement treated it that way.

Why the staging matters

Studios announce voice casts every week; they rarely hand the microphone to their lead and let her break the news between songs. The Bowl reveal doubled as a promise about what kind of musical this is — one confident enough to preview its heroine's big number, performed by an orchestra, a year and a half before opening night. It also capped a busy stretch for animated musicals at Warner Bros., and it gives Previously readers a date to circle next spring. For more on next year's big franchise bets, see our report on The Mummy: Book of the Dead, and our coverage of the first trailer for Greta Gerwig's Narnia film.