The newly branded Ariana Grande-Butera wants to extend her one short day in Hollywood for a little while longer. “I’m gonna say something so scary. It’s gonna scare the absolute shit out of my fans and everyone, but I love them and they’ll deal,” she said during a recent appearance on Matt Rogers’ and Bowen Yang’s Las Culturistas podcast.
For people excited about her upcoming performance in Wicked—which director Jon M. Chu once said ” will blow your mind and break your hearts”—this announcement probably won’t be that scary at all. “I’m always gonna make music,” she continued. “I’m always gonna go onstage, I’m always gonna do pop stuff, I pinky promise. But I don’t think doing it at the rate I’ve been doing it for the past 10 years is where I see the next 10 years.”
That new plan involves a lot more time in front of the camera. “I think I love acting,” she said. “I love musical theater. I think reconnecting with this part of myself who started in musical theater and who loves comedy, and it heals me to do that.” That healing, she explained, comes in the form of putting parts of herself into “little homes and characters” instead of “songwriting my own pain, because it’s just like constantly reliving that one thing that you wrote the song about.”
Of course, Grande isn’t the first actor to talk recently about the process as a form of healing. Sydney Sweeney previously characterized the catharsis she gets from filming Euphoria as a form of “therapy,” and just this week, Barry Keoghan said he “likes to get that kind of therapeutic experience in a way from [acting]… I want to have something to draw from. So I don’t want to go back and have closure on everything.” This job really does change actors’ lives for good.
English (US) ·