When Wicked: For Good premiered, Variety released a puff piece praising Glinda the Good Witch star Ariana Grande for being one of the only pop stars to ever make the transition from musician to major acting star. However, it’s an odd bit of praise, for Grande was a star of stage and screen long before she picked up a microphone.
Judging from the internet backlash to this proclamation (which follows on the heels of the Wicked sequel getting tepid reviews), it’s fair to say that this puff piece has backfired in the most spectacular way.
Popular, She’s Gonna Be Popular
The Variety piece was written by Daniel D’Addario, who declared that “Ariana Grande did the near impossible” by making “the perilous crossover from pop icon to movie star.” The author claims this is a feat that other pop legends like Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Madonna, and Justin Timberlake have failed to do. This was followed by some hot takes that some of these stars (like Madonna and Timberlake) only have one hit movie to their name, which is a huge contrast to Grande, who has two.
It’s not hard to see the author really splitting hairs here because Wicked was controversially split into two parts so that director Jon M. Chu could stretch the hit Broadway play (which was shorter in its entirety than the first Wicked movie!) into a duology designed to dominate the holidays two years in a row. Praising Grande for being in two hit movies begs the question: if Evita (which the author declared Madonna’s “one unambiguous movie triumph”) had been arbitrarily split into two parts, would D’Addario be celebrating her as the first pop icon to star in multiple hit movies?
Wicked: For Bad
On X, some users pointed this out, claiming that the success of the second movie isn’t exactly shocking, given that the box office performance of the first film virtually guaranteed the sequel would be a smash hit. Ariana Grande is legitimately great in both, but the Variety puff piece claims that “she proved the first film was no fluke” with the success of the second film. Not only does this discount the hard work of the director and other members of this ensemble cast, but it gives Grande credit for headlining multiple hit movies that she just happened to film at the same time.
Other X users pointed out that earlier pop icons achieved greater success, like Cher winning a Best Actress Oscar for Moonstruck and Lady Gaga getting nominated for Best Actress for A Star Is Born (she ended up winning the Oscar for Best Original Song for the same film). The Academy Awards are arguably the best measure of a movie star’s success, and so far, Grande has earned only a single nomination while earning no trophies. Wouldn’t that, by definition, make both Cher and Lady Gaga pop stars who became movie stars long before Grande sang her way to Oz and back?
She’s Not That Girl
Still more users pointed out something the Variety article only obliquely acknowledged: that Ariana Grande was a Nickelodeon star of shows like Victorious and acted on Broadway before she became a singer. For that matter, she acted in a ton of major TV shows like Scream Queens and movies like Zoolander 2 and Don’t Look Up (itself a hit movie nominated for four Academy Awards) before starring in Wicked. Therefore, it’s bizarre to play up the significance of her going from singer to actor (it was literally the other way around!) and even weirder to act like these two Wicked movies are the only opportunities Grande has had to demonstrate serious acting chops.
These criticisms represent just a few of the issues that thousands of internet users had with Variety’s puff piece on Ariana Grande. Collectively, they illustrate how much this empty marketing stunt backfired on the publication and cast the singer/actor in a negative light. Considering that almost every discussion about the press for Wicked: For Good has people asking why Grande is looking and acting so weird, it’s clear that Variety may have done more harm than good, giving this troubled star extraordinarily controversial praise at the exact moment she desperately needs some non-controversial press.
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