When I spoke with Wicked star Ariana Grande over Zoom last week, she was still getting used to being an Oscar nominee. She was also basking in awards
When I spoke with Wicked star Ariana Grande over Zoom last week, she was still getting used to being an Oscar nominee. She was also basking in awards season—which isn’t usually how contenders feel after promoting their films for months on end. “I’m grateful to be here. It’s been wild,” she says. “I feel like I’m at a weird sleepaway camp where I see Ralph Fiennes every Thursday.”
The next day, I saw Grande at the AFI Awards—on a Thursday—and she was standing in the center of the room, talking to—you guessed it—Conclave star Ralph Fiennes. So maybe Grande really is a good witch who can predict the future. Or maybe she’s just good at speaking things into existence.
Either way, Grande is a first-time Oscar nominee thanks to her energetic performance as Glinda in the box-office hit Wicked. “It’s so surreal. I will never get used to that,” she says. “It’s something I’ll cherish forever.”
Grande has spoken about how she wanted to play Glinda for many years, and her passion is palpable even now as we speak about the role. For this week’s Little Gold Men, we also chat about how she has been changed (for good!) both physically and emotionally after becoming Glinda, how she survives living a very public life, and what role she’s hoping to take on next. Listen below or read on for more:
Vanity Fair: In our cover story, you and Cynthia Erivo spoke about how you’ve supported one another since you started on Wicked.
Ariana Grande: We hadn’t had a chemistry read together or anything. We didn’t test together. We hadn’t met each other in person. I was such a fan of hers and I had so much respect for her. I think just upon being cast and immediately being able to connect, it was a mutual and enthusiastic commitment. I really wanted to get granular with it, going through our contracts together, making sure she was getting what she needed. There’s so much we have in common, but also we’re very different, and I never wanted her to feel like there was anything she couldn’t share with me or couldn’t say to me. I feel like in this world, people are so eager to pit women against each other, and it just was not an option.
It makes you quite vulnerable to do that.
But also that’s so pretty. Vulnerability is such a gift, and it’s how we really get to know people.
How did you relate easily to Glinda, and what did you find most hard to understand about her?
I think something that we share is this adjacent relationship to grief. I think grief can be so many things at once. And I think in “No One Mourns the Wicked,” she’s experiencing a lot of them at once. It’s devastation, heartbreak, also disappointment, also guilt. One of the reasons I think I was meant to play this role—the comedy, of course, is such an significant piece of the puzzle, and I love comedy—but I don’t think that’s why I was called to do this. I think it was more about what’s underneath the surface.
The hardest part was allowing her to have a little touch of that mean girl at the beginning, because I wanted to protect her. It was really demanding, because I don’t think she’s a bad person. I know in fact that she’s a really good person. She’s just been blinded by her privilege. I was doing a lot of coming up with excuses. That part was tough. I’m very protective over her.
What was your first day on set like?
It was quite surreal. There is an element of magic that was present, and it was very emotional. We started in the dorm room. We were so lucky that that was the first scene because it was kind of parallel: it was our first day as those characters in the costumes, and that scene is just about getting to know each other. That felt like a scene where we were still kind of getting to know each other as Glinda and Elphaba.
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