Ariana Grande on Plans to Quit Pop Star Career and How ‘Wicked’ Changed Her Mind

THE RUNDOWN

• Ariana Grande revealed on the podcast Shut Up Evan that she contemplated leaving her pop star career behind when she left to make Wicked.
• She spoke about how playing Glinda changed her mind and what ultimately led her to make Eternal Sunshine.
• She also addressed her plans to tour and why it “probably won’t happen [again] for a long time.”

Ariana Grande had a secret when she traveled to the U.K. to make Wicked: She was ready to leave her pop star days behind. During her appearance on Evan Ross Katz’s podcast Shut Up Evan, the singer discussed how playing Glinda changed her mind about her own music career, along with her decision to do a mini tour for her album Eternal Sunshine, which she recorded while working on the film. (She said another tour “probably won’t happen for a long time again after this one.”)

The star began by saying Wicked has “done so much for Ariana. It has totally rearranged everything about my relationship to creating. I didn’t think I was going to make an album ever again when I left for London. That was my secret, but I didn’t think I was going to.”

But embodying Glinda, who is such a confident character, changed Grande, too. “Obviously, you can take the hat off and be not in character when you go home for the day, but you take the feelings home and performing the act of Glinda, who is so sure of herself,” she said. “And so even when the decisions are hard, I remember it early in the process, unpacking that a lot with my therapist because my brain really liked it. She had a connection to her gut that I think I kind of lost through trauma.

“It happens with trauma. That’s okay,” Grande continued. “But our work is to kind of like reconnect that. And I think through the act of performing it and Glinda’s certainty and Glinda’s belief in herself totally ignited something, a strength in me that I missed, that I really needed.

“So I learned a lot from her as a character who learns so much over the course of these two films and has to look at herself in the mirror constantly and sort of peel away at the pieces of her that don’t feel aligned. So I do think that I was kind of forced to do that alongside her.”

Grande said touring and creating music are “so self-focused. You know, it’s singularly about the artist. And I think that that wears on my soul sometimes, especially because there’s the caricaturized version of me that is the artist.” She called her pop star persona a character just like Glinda.

Still, it was a part of her life she felt called to return to. She recalled the moment during filming when she was ready to make her own music again. “I felt just a genuine spark of reconnection and inspiration and something. I mean, maybe I missed it. Maybe it’s as simple as I missed it,” she said. “But I do feel like you have to miss things in order to learn how to become better for them. And I think I learned so much. And then also I genuinely wanted to do it. It just felt like I couldn’t not. It was an inspired moment, and I had to write an album. And I had to do it. And they said, ‘Well, you have reshoots in January.’ And I said, ‘Great, that’s fine. I’ll finish it before then or I’ll finish it after.’”

That project became Eternal Sunshine.

Her decision to tour came from a similar feeling. “Something inside is saying I have to do it,” she said. “And I’m grateful for that because I don’t think I would have said that about a tour forever ago. But you know, I’m just being open and honest about how I feel about these things in real time and following the impulses creatively. You know, they just shout, and then there we are.”

She added, “I think putting out the deluxe [version of Eternal Sunshine] informed me that I had to do it because I really felt like I’m going to be really sad if I don’t sing this album live. I love this album, and I need to sing it. And I think that would be a really special experience for me and my fans and also how beautiful to re-imagine my relationship to touring in this baby step way. And not that—I mean, this probably won’t happen for a long time again after this one.

“But still, it’ll heal something, and it’ll be really beautiful the same way that this album has. I think it’ll be a nice next step, and I think it’ll be so fun to see the fans. So that’s how it happened and why it happened.”

Watch the full interview below:

More on Ariana Grande