She did it for the sake of the production, but honestly, Erivo was into the look: “I would love to do that again,” she says.
Grande has to wrap today’s music video shoot at 4 a.m. or else. We’re at a secret outdoor location in LA, where the shoot is set to begin at midnight. But Grande’s been at it since the early afternoon, rehearsing in full hair and makeup, and working with her stylist, Mimi Cuttrell, to find the perfect costume. When I arrive around 11:30 p.m., she bounds out of her trailer to greet me. “It’s trippy,” she says of the set, then twirls in the pink satin floor-length dress that she and Cuttrell settled on.
From her adolescence on Broadway to her days as a Nickelodeon star to her debut as a solo artist at the age of 18, Grande has clung to who she is. After seven studio albums, all those hits—including the synth-pop Robyn-esque breakup bop “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)”—and several world tours, she’s one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. As of this writing, she has nearly 100 million more followers on Instagram than Taylor Swift.
We walk to set, and Grande fills me in on the shoot: the camera angles, the significance of the setting, and how it all fits within the “short film” she plans to shoot for Eternal Sunshine, the concept album in which she processes her divorce from Dalton Gomez. Her involvement behind the scenes is worlds away from her experience on Wicked, where she had the luxury of simply being an actor. “We weren’t really watching dailies,” Grande said earlier of making the film. “We never watched playback. It’s very unlike me as well, ’cause when I’m doing a music video, I will watch everything.”
In between takes on her video shoot, Grande regularly dashes over to director Christian Breslauer to review the footage. “We have to make it cuttable—make it look like one shot, basically,” she tells me. “So I have to land in the exact same spot, and the camera has to land on the exact same spot—and we have two where it’s perfect. We’re going to try for one more, just in case.” Soon she’s skipping back to set. On her way, I hear her trill on a high-soprano note in the distance.
Grande’s calling card, her ace in the hole, her unassailable asset, is her voice. There’s a reason she was asked to sing “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” at Aretha Franklin’s funeral. So it’s ironic—absurd, really—that not long ago she was criticized for the way she speaks. As Wicked promotion kicked into gear, fans noticed her talking in a higher, lighter soprano than her naturally more earthy alto. Last summer a clip of Grande on Penn Badgley’s Podcrushed went viral when people accused Grande of slipping into a different register after she started to laugh. Grande finally addressed the accusations in a TikTok comment: “I intentionally change my vocal placement (high/low) often depending on how much singing i’m doing,” she wrote. “I’ve always done this BYE.”
Grande admits that the flak has been tricky to navigate: “There is a part of the world that isn’t familiar with what it takes to transform your voice, whether it’s singing or taking on a different dialect for a role or doing a character voice for something.” There’s also a double standard that punishes women who go the extra mile for roles. (See also: Gaga, Lady.) “When it’s a male actor that does it, it’s acclaimed,” Grande says. “There are definitely jokes that are made as well, but it’s always after being led with praise: ‘Oh, wow, he was so lost in the role.’ And that’s just a part of the job, really.” I can’t help but think of Austin Butler’s Oscar-nominated performance in Elvis. “Tale as old as time being a woman in this industry,” she says. “You are treated differently, and you are under a microscope in a way that some people aren’t.”
For the record, throughout our interviews, conversations, and voice notes—she loves to send a voice note—Grande uses all registers of her voice. If anything stands out, it’s the crispness with which she enunciates these days, popping her p’s and articulating her t’s like a 1940s star with a mid-Atlantic accent. This could be an overcorrection after years of being told she mumbles when she sings. Or maybe she’s still Glinda-ing. Either way, she’s happy with the results.
“It’s something that I’m just really proud of,” Grande says of her voice. “Part of why I did want to engage [on TikTok] is because I am really proud of my hard work and of the fact that I did give 100 percent of myself, including my physicality, to this role. I am proud of that, so I wanted to protect it.”
Grande interrupts. “This girl—I’m sorry, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna be Cynthia. Here we go.” She gets up and starts imitating Erivo as she was moments before shooting “Defying Gravity,” Elphaba’s barn-burning act one finale. “Green, hat, harness, flying in a second,” Grande says, painting the picture. She then begins furiously fake texting, French tips clacking on her phone. “They are like, ‘Camera’s up,’ and she goes, ‘Bag.’ ” Grande mimes putting the phone into a pretend purse, then effortlessly hits the famous “aaaahhAhhAhhAAAHHH” riff at the end of the song, which Wicked fans refer to as Elphaba’s battle cry.
