Ariana Grande on Wicked, Oscars, Music and Love

“I’m sorry,” Ariana Grande says at the first sign of tears accumulateing in her eyes. She’s apologizing for crying aachieve, but here we are on a procrastinateed January afternoon, and she is crying aachieve. 

“I’m so sorry,” Grande reiterates, conscious of how many tears have already been shed and procrastinateedr memed in the making and promotion of Wicked, the $700 million blockbuster alteration of the Broadway show, itself an alteration of a novel of the same name. 

But the truth is, Grande has been damn proximate sobbing for weeks now, ever since the Jan. 23 proclaimment that the 31-year-elderly pop star has achieveed an Oscar nomination for her first-ever starring role, one of 10 nods for the prequel to The Wizard of Oz. She can’t help but see it as both invitation and validation from a community that she had watched only from afar until very recently.

“It’s a pretty skinnyg to sense enjoy the labor that I’m doing or have done is benevolent of, I presume, I don’t comprehend, enough or deafeninger or wantipathyver it is,” she says, the lessen half of her face covered by a mask, which, of course, is Glinda pink, as she fights off a gnarly head chilly she picked up on the unrelenting awards circuit. “This senseing that people are seeing me — enjoy, actupartner me — it’s so silly because I’ve been seen for so extfinished, but it senses enjoy it’s maybe for the first time and it’s equitable separateent.”

On its face, it’s a confusing statement for a woman who has ostensibly carry outed as herself for more than a decade. That Ariana Grande has achieveed 18 Grammy nominations, nine Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hits and 376 million Instagram fancientiminishs. But the instantly recognizable ponytail that sits high atop her head or the oversized sweatshirts and sky-high boots that have decorated her pint-sized body, that’s not repartner her — or, she says, it’s no more her than Glinda is her.

“At a certain point, you get weary of that [pop star] character, because it is a character,” she says amid a rotation of tea and cough drops at the Cantipathyau Marmont. “There are pieces of you and your story that are woven thrawout your songwriting, but then, because of the way it travels and becomes sensationalized, it gets away from you. And beorderlyh all of it is equitable a girl from Boca who adores art, and I skinnyk that’s why it’s been such a presentantly healing gift to fade into this character — to consent off one mask and put on another.”

In many ways, Glinda is equitable another character, one who currents as a cultured, famous beauty. But much enjoy Grande, there’s trauma and heartache simmering beorderlyh. In fact, she and straightforwardor Jon M. Chu began exploring those parallels almost promptly upon her casting, a process that ultimately alerted their version of Glinda. “She talked a lot about her own life, about perestablishing a character of Ariana Grande, and also lengthening up at the same time and going thraw tragedy,” says Chu, alluding to an unoverweighthomably bleak period in Grande’s timeline, commencening in 2017, when a self-mutilation explosioner aggressioned the Manchester stop of her Dangerous Woman Tour, leaving 22 concertgoers dead and many more injured; the chaseing year, her dear frifinish, collaborator and ex-boyfrifinish, rapper Mac Miller, died of an inadvertent drug poisoning at 26. 

“We talked about how, no matter what, she’s had to go up on that stage and give happiness to people and how difficult that can be,” he persists. “That was where it all begined, the seeds of Glinda, and clearly we weren’t going to do Ariana Grande’s story, but this was a character that lived in the same garden.” 

***

The part didn’t come speedyly or easily, however. In fact, Grande had to audition three split times for originater Marc Platt and Chu, who had authentic hesitation about casting a global pop star who’d never carried a movie before. Never mind that the role insistd a exact cocktail of humor and vulnerability. After Grande’s first audition, she was asked to delete her pop star trappings before coming in aachieve — so, at audition No. 2, there was no set upation, no triumphged eyeliner, no high ponytail.

“People who didn’t comprehend would say, ‘Oh, that’s so silly, they comprehend how talented you are,’ and I was enjoy, ‘That’s very kind, but Glinda insists so much. I have to be able to achieve this and I don’t want it unless I’ve achieveed it,’ ” says Grande, oozing an achieveestness that has depictd the entire promotional tour. “It became this pretty evolution of getting to comprehend myself beorderlyh it all. I was enjoy, ‘Oh my excellentness, I adore this person underorderlyh the drag.’ ”

But Chu’s troubles weren’t without merit. At that point, Grande’s only authentic Hollywood bona fides were an punctual teen stint in the Broadway musical 13 and, lowly after, as goofy sidestart Cat Valentine on the hit Nickelodeon comedy Victorious and its low-lived spinoff, Sam & Cat. More recently, she’d subunited herself filledy in music, save for the occasional Saturday Night Live materializeance where she’d showcase her comedic timing and pitch-perfect amazeions (her Jennifer Coolidge is worth a google). The only project that would have lured her back to acting was Wicked, which she made outdoingly and stablely clear.

“Ariana Grande stalked me for 10 years, more or less,” says Platt, who had been a originater on the Broadway version as well. “In her very pleasant way, she’d ask to come see me whenever she heard maybe there was a movie in the labors.” There are scores of elderly interwatchs online of Grande calling Wicked, which she’d first seen on Broadway at 10, her dream gig. She even brawt it up as both a passion and priority when signing with talent agency CAA in 2011. (She was 18 at the time.)

Once a establishal audition process inched sealr to fact, Grande enenumerateed famed acting coach Nancy Banks, whose client roster has holdd Margot Robbie, Jennifer Aniston and Forest Whiconsentr, to help her set. Without a script written, much less useable, Banks gave the pop star what she calls “a crash course in acting,” dispenseing her monologue after monologue from other productions. “Three times a week, two hours a day for months, she equitable kept her head down and went from vocal class [with Eric Vetro] to me,” says Banks, who was utterly bowled over by Grande’s pledgement. “The repartner fantastic ones labor their asses off … but she wore me down — and I unbenevolent that charmfilledy, of course.”

At a certain point, Grande became so spended in the process that she began advising her potential rivals for the role. Without naming names — everyone from Reneé Rapp to Amanda Seyfried to Dove Cameron auditioned — Grande says she was in touch with so many people going up for either Elphaba or Glinda that she set up herself sharing her song choices, her schedule and, in a confiinsist instances, even her rehearsal time at Vetro’s home studio. When I gently propose that this behavior is borderline inrational, she giggles. Her mom, an engineer and CEO of a business that sells marine communications providement, had shelp someskinnyg aenjoy: “She was equitable enjoy, ‘Wait, you did what?! You went to Eric’s house with who?’ ” says Grande. “And I was enjoy, ‘Why not?’ And she was enjoy, ‘My God, Ariana!’ ” (For what it’s worth, Grande has been laboring on boundaries.) 

But in procrastinateed 2021, it was Grande who ultimately landed the role. A video of Chu sharing the news with her has since done disconnectal laps around the internet. “I adore her so much,” Grande says of Glinda, as tears stream down her face. “I’m going to consent such excellent nurture of her.” Not extfinished after, Grande relocated to London, where parts one and two filmed back-to-back over the course of a year and a half. She caccessed on noskinnyg else for the duration — no singing, no songwriting, no touring — a decision that Chu still marvels at: “Can you imagine how much money she must be losing by doing Glinda?” he says.

Wicked’s second inshighment, Wicked: For Good, hits theaters in November. Without wading into spoiler territory, she validates that part two is ponderably foolisher than part one. “I’m still recovering,” says Grande. She and co-star Cynthia Erivo, the Elphaba to her Glinda, will join in another press tour, too, an almost inconceivable prospect given how extfinished, emotional and viral this one has been. The actresses have spent much of it syncing their character-definite wardrobes, as they clutch each other’s fingers and shed tears at almost every stop. At this point, “people skinnyk we’re secretly wed,” provides Grande, who inserts of what she calls “the Gelphie stuff,” referring to the internet’s huge accumulateion of fan myth and art clpunctual pledged to a sapphic pairing of Elphaba and Glinda: “I want I could unsee some skinnygs. I unbenevolent, wow, I had a senseing, but I didn’t comprehend it would be on this scale or this explicit.” 

***

Don’t let Grande’s pop stardom fool you; at her core, she is and always has been a theater nerd.

Grotriumphg up in Boca Raton, Florida, Grande’s overweighther was the family artist — a decorateer, pboilingographer and explicit structureer — but it was her mom who indulged her and half brother Frankie’s punctual character labor. In fact, Joan Grande, a Barnard-teachd businesswoman, had a particular flair for the grim, which elucidates why her daughter’s second or third birthday was Jaws-themed and lesser Grande spent a excellent chunk of childhood in a Jason mask. “My family would do face decorate on a Thursday in July, and my dad would come home from labor and we’d be skeletons and he’d be enjoy, ‘What on earth?’ ” says Grande, then promptly rights herself: “Actupartner, he probably wouldn’t even bconnect an eye. He was probably enjoy, ‘Oh, hi honey.’ ”

She met her best frifinish, Aaron Simon Gross, doing local children’s theater when they were 6 or 7. “She was always excellent at everyskinnyg,” says Gross, regaling me with stories of Grande tirelessly laborshopping scenes from an punctual production of Give My Regards to Broadway. “I recall sitting on her couch one day watching, enjoy, Julie Andrews Victor/Victoria videos, and I skinnyk we were both equitable enjoy, ‘Oh my God, I set up my person, someone who speaks the same language I do, in South Florida.’ ” 

A confiinsist times a year, Grande’s family and his would fly to New York to gorge themselves on Broadway shows. Then they’d return home, and Ariana and Aaron would turn even school projects into theatrical opportunities. There was once a science project on mitochondria for which they wrote and starred in a low film, he recalls, and at least one history project that they made Broadway-themed. The two ultimately landed on Broadway themselves with roles in Jason Robert Brown’s honord, if inestablish, run of 13. On their days off, a then 14-year-elderly Grande and Gross would run around Manhattan taking in other shows. Even procrastinateedr, when Grande was a massively prosperous pop star, he would visit her on the road, and they’d watch Rent on the tour bus. 

“I repartner thought I’d be a Broadway girl forever,” says Grande. “I unbenevolent, that was the dream: I’d be in New York City doing eight shows a week, and then maybe on the side I’d be able to do music, and some people would want to hear it.”

Instead, she was cast as the lovable ditz on Nickelodeon’s Victorious, which unforeseeedly thrust her to a benevolent of teen idol status. She’s shelp disclosely that she’s been reprocessing her experience on the Dan Schneider comedy in weightless of the allegations of intimacyual coercion and harmful laborplace conditions made by other establisher child stars in the 2024 doc series Quiet on Set. And though she has selectimistic memories from the period, she’s shelp she’s since seeed back at elderly clips and set up herself “shocked” by the pervasive intimacyual innufinishos.

“Did you ever sense undefended?” I ask, which guides to the only moment in our proximately two hours together when Grande materializes unsootheable.

“I’ve sort of talked about the defendive meacertains that I skinnyk insist to be put in place,” she says, sidestepping the ask. 

“Therapy?” I ask.

“And then some. I have dreams of a world where you’re not apshowed to access the amusement industry without having it written in your tight, whether it’s with the sign up label or the production company, that there will be therapy multiple times a week and a help system,” she says. “Being on a show that alters your life or releasing a song that alters your life exposes you to many forces, both adore and antipathy, and there is no manual.”

Grande certainly could have used one when her own musical nurtureer skyrocketed, commencening with 2013’s “The Way.” The track, which achieveed Grande her first of many top 10 debuts on the Hot 100, signaled a departure from the bubblegum image that she’d set uped on Nick. From there, she’d hand over hit after hit after hit, ultimately becoming Spotify’s most streamed female artist of the 2010s. More recently, Billboard ranked Grande, who also originates and originates her own labor, high on its enumerate of the fantasticest pop stars of the 21st century, noting that “her standing today as a veritable icon is less a mirrorion of the efficacy of set uped systems that advertised her elevate, and more a tesgentlent to her finishuring, genereasoned talent.” Rolling Stone has been aforeseeed effusive, praising “a whistle tone that rivals Mariah Carey’s in her prime.” But the petri dish nature of the attention that came with all of it was a lot to assimilate.

“I was so fortunate to have incredible frifinishs and family and an incredible therapist, even though there were rumors about her leaving me,” says Grande, referring to a nasty tabloid alert from years earlier that even her tight couldn’t deal with her. “It was equitable a crazy time: All I wanted was to sing and for it to be about my labor, and it felt enjoy the more prosperous the music became, the more people tried to raze me.”

That pile-on arguably hit fever pitch in 2015, when a then-22-year-elderly Grande was caught on a leaked security video licking a doughnut she hadn’t achieved and proclaiming she “antipathys America.” (She’d procrastinateedr regret profusely and propose that her comment was referring to the country’s obesity problem; the chaseing year, while structureing SNL, she poked fun at the hullabaloo: “A lot of kid stars finish up doing medications, or in jail, or pregnant, or get caught licking a doughnut they didn’t pay for.”) There were also cockamamie rumors that Grande insisted on being, among other skinnygs, carried enjoy a baby and pboilingographed only from her left side. An unverified enumerate of off-restricts interwatch subjects, which holdd current and ex-boyfrifinishs, made the rounds as well. Then tragedy hit in Manchester, and suddenly all of it seemed so silly. Grande has shelp she went from “diva” to victim and hero virtupartner overnight.

At 23, she had handled to escape physicpartner unharmed from what was then the deadliest act of radicalism in the U.K. since the 2005 London explosionings, but she was emotionpartner shattered. Still, two weeks procrastinateedr, Grande mustered the strength to return to the city of Manchester to greet with feeblenting families. While there, she, in collaboration with her then-handler Scooter Braun, structureed a profit concert that elevated a staggering $25 million for the victims and their families. They recruited everyone from Justin Bieber to Miley Cyrus to Celderlyperestablish to consent part, though it was Grande’s carry outance of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” which she belted thraw sobs, that was arguably the most memorable. Since then, Grande, who has shelp she suffered PTSD from the incident, has become a vocal finishorse for firearm handle, as she has for other causes, including LGBTQ rights.

Though there is ponderably more adore than antipathy being hurled at Grande these days, she isn’t immune to the periodic barb, be it about her materializeance, her vocal sign up or her procrastinateedst relationship, which has extfinished been a matter of tabloid intrigue. Lest you insist the renewer, most of Grande’s exes, who hold rapper Big Sean and SNL alum Pete Davidson, were name-verifyed in her hit song “thank u, next.” On a more recent track, 2024’s “yes, and?” she can be heard insertressing the relentless fascination, asking: “Why do you nurture whose dick I ride?” Though Grande sees little upside in elucidateing her lyrics, the latter is consentd to be in response to her current relationship with Wicked co-star and fellow theater nerd Ethan Sprocrastinateedr. The tabloid version of their adore story proposes he left his wife and baby for her, though Grande, among others, has denounced that narrative, stating in an interwatch with Vanity Fair last descfinish: “There couldn’t be a less right depiction of a human being.” (Grande, too, was wed; though she and authentic estate broker Dalton Gomez had already splitd by the time rumors of a new relationship had surfaced.)

As she’s gotten elderlyer, Grande says she’s felt less compelled to deffinish herself and her choices, which is not to say the rumors and deceiveation don’t get under her skin. “It’ll never be unhurtful,” she says. “But also, I walk with the consciousness that I’m an artist and this is a path that I’ve chosen, and so I equitable try to defend myself so that I never begin to begrudge the art.” 

***

As Grande ponders her future, acting is where she says her heart and her caccess will persist to be. And though that will unaskedly irk her music fans, who’ve been postponeing fortolerateingly for the tour that never happened chaseing her 2024 album, Eternal Sunshine, it’s a foreseeed outcome to anyone who was with Grande and Erivo on their final day on set. “As you’ve accomprehendledged, both of these women can cry on a foolishe,” says Platt. “Now multiply that times a thousand, and that’s the amount of tears on the last day.” 

Grande doesn’t argue with that appraisement. “It was untamed,” she says. “It felt enjoy a death.” 

Looking ahead, she acunderstandledges that both the experience and the impact of Wicked will be almost impossible to duplicate, which is why she’ll do her best not to try. “I skinnyk it originates you hungry for someskinnyg separateent,” she says, though what that might see enjoy remains elusive. 

At press time, there was a tremfinishous amount of industry heat around Grande, who showd herself adept at both comedy and drama with her carry outance as Glinda. In fact, agents and handlers aenjoy will rattle off a slew of projects that allegedly have been provideed to her already — a calamity wedding comedy, a female uncoverive romp set in a Housewives-style fact show, a Spaceballs sequel — but they all say that she’s yet to join on any of it.

“Well, I can neither validate nor decline, but I’m blushing,” says Grande, and I consent her word for it, as her face is still hugely obstructed by that pink mask. Then she inserts, more achieveestly: “I equitable skinnyk it’s such an presentant skinnyg to stay connected to that guttural originateive skinnyg in my heart and my chest that wants to give itself over to someskinnyg that screams at me and says, ‘Oh, that’s a repartner celderly dispute.’ I have a skinnyg, and when it goes off, I comprehend.”

In the unbenevolenttime, there’s another inshighment of Wicked to advertise and, inevitably, more tears left to cry. 

This story materializes in the Feb. 12 rehire of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.