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It looks like Ariana Grande has applied a classic bit of kitchen wisdom to her romantic life: Sometimes, you gotta toss the sponge. TMZ<\/a> and other news outlets reported on Monday that Grande and Ethan Slater, her Wicked<\/em> co-star whose other biggest claim to fame is having played SpongeBob SquarePants on Broadway, ended their three-year relationship several months ago.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a decidedly anticlimactic conclusion for a couple whose early relationship was an all-out scandal<\/a>. In July 2023, news sources reported that Grande and Slater got together while filming the first Wicked <\/em>movie in London\u2014and that it may have started while both of them were still married to other people: Grande to real-estate agent Dalton Gomez, and Slater to his high school sweetheart, Lilly Jay, with whom he shared an infant son. That timeline has never been completely cleared up in the intervening years\u2014Grande and Slater\u2019s camps insisted that there was no overlap, but if nothing else, it all certainly looked messy.<\/p>\n Though it can\u2019t have been fun to weather the \u201chomewrecker\u201d allegations that followed and the frenzy surrounding her new relationship, Grande ultimately seemed to earn more side-eye than flat-out condemnation. Together, she and Slater promoted two blockbuster Wicked<\/em> movies and tried, mostly successfully, to keep a low profile with their relationship. If anything, Slater bore the brunt of the ire. While he may have deserved this from a moral standpoint, the criticism he got was often less about morals and more about calling him ugly or awkward. In addition to being known as Grande\u2019s main sponge, his biggest pop culture moments have been a widely memed dance through Jennifer Hudson\u2019s spirit tunnel<\/a> and a one-sided feud with a TikTok creator who hated his Wicked<\/em> character<\/a>.<\/p>\n