Credit: UniversalAriana Grande is one of the biggest pop stars in the world, but apparently, she had to spend over a decade “hunting” down a producer and being rejected before she could land a starring role in the upcoming film musical Wicked.
Like many pop stars, Ariana Grande began as a child actress, starring as Cat Valentine in the Nickelodeon series Victorious. Since then, she has almost completely remade her image, now presenting herself as a highly sexualized, critically acclaimed singer with a famously wide vocal range and whistle register.
Grande has also almost completely given up acting, not having appeared as a character in a film or TV series since a cameo in the HBO series Kidding in 2019. It turns out that she was saving her de facto live-action film debut for Wicked, a musical she has apparently spent years pursuing.
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In a recent interview on The Zach Sang Show, Ariana Grande revealed that she had spent years “hunting” down Broadway mega-producer Marc Platt and begging for an audition if and when a film adaptation of Wicked ever happened. According to Grande, “Since I was 20, I was like, ‘Hey, I don’t know when this is happening, but when it’s happening, may I please at least just audition?’ That’s all I wanted, was an audition. I’ve never wanted anything more.”
Grande continued, saying, “I have never wanted something as badly as I did this…I had no expectations, I was just thankful to go in at all, I was so excited to have the opportunity to audition.” In accordance with that excitement, she spent six months “prepping for the auditions,” and “I trained every single day to prove to [Wicked producers] that I could handle taking on this other person.”
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Ariana Grande will star in the John M. Chu-directed adaptation of Wicked, an adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s series of revisionist Oz books, which fills out the backstory of the Wicked Witch of the West (portrayed by Cynthia Erivo) and presents the magical land with a darker moral relativism. Grande will portray a younger version of Glinda, who will someday become the Good Witch.
Wicked will co-star Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode, Bronwyn James, Keala Settle, and Bowen Yang. The film is scheduled for theaters on November 27 and will be followed by a sequel, which is already in production.
What’s your favorite song from Wicked? Let’s hear it in the comments below!