Before I saw Wicked, I was fully prepared to say “this is not for me.” But then I watched it and… yeah, I enjoyed it. Was it the best thing ever? Eh, that’s an impossible standard, but it was fine-to-good. What really surprised me was how much I enjoyed both Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Both women really worked their asses off and you could see it on screen. Well, now both women are Oscar-nominated for their performances, Cynthia as the lead actress category and Ariana in supporting. To celebrate her first Oscar nomination, Ari posted this on her social media:
picking my head up in between sobs to say thank you so much to @theacademy for this unfathomable recognition. i cannot stop crying, to no one’s surprise. i’m humbled and deeply honored to be in such brilliant company and sharing this with tiny ari who sat and studied Judy Garland singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow just before the big, beautiful bubble entered. i’m so proud of you, tiny.
thank you again, from the bottom of my heart, for this acknowledgement @theacademy.
thank you @jonmchu for taking this chance on me and for being the most unbelievably brilliant leader, human being, and most fierce friend. i am so deeply proud of my beautiful Wicked family. i am so proud of my Elphie, my sister, my dear @cynthiaerivo. your brilliance is never ending and you deserve every flower (tulip) in every garden. i love you unconditionally, always.
i don’t quite have all my words yet, i’m still trying to breathe. but thank you. oh my goodness, thank you. Universal, Marc, my family, my heart.
lemons and melons and pears, oh my.
Real talk: if Ariana was a less messy person or she had a less scandalous romantic life, I actually think she would be a major contender. I’m not even joking, she was really good in Wicked and she absolutely deserves this nomination. I’m just saying, she probably could have won if she and Ethan Slater didn’t have an affair and wreck both of their marriages (ON THIS FILM!). Alas, my guess/hope is that Lilly Jay’s well-timed essay last month was the final word on Ariana’s Oscar chances. As it should be.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
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- LONDON, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 18: Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo attend the “Wicked: Part One” UK Premiere at The Royal Festival Hall on November 18, 2024 in London, England. (,Image: 936053991, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Lounis Tiar / Avalon
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- LONDON, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 18: Ariana Grande attends the “Wicked: Part One” UK Premiere at The Royal Festival Hall on November 18, 2024 in London, England. (,Image: 936054097, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Lounis Tiar / Avalon
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- LONDON, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 18: Ariana Grande attends the “Wicked: Part One” UK Premiere at The Royal Festival Hall on November 18, 2024 in London, England. (,Image: 936054123, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Lounis Tiar / Avalon
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- UK premiere of ‘Wicked’ at the Royal Festival Hall Featuring: Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande Where: London, United Kingdom When: 18 Nov 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- UK premiere of ‘Wicked’ at the Royal Festival Hall Featuring: Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo Where: London, United Kingdom When: 18 Nov 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- 82nd Annual Golden Globe Awards arrivals at The Beverly Hilton Featuring: Ariana Grande Where: Beverly Hills, California, United States When: 05 Jan 2025 Credit: MediaPunch/INSTARimages
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- 82nd Annual Golden Globe Awards arrivals at The Beverly Hilton Featuring: Ariana Grande Where: Beverly Hills, California, United States When: 05 Jan 2025 Credit: MediaPunch/INSTARimages
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- Ariana Grande at the 2025 National Board of Review Awards Gala at Cipriani 42nd Street Featuring: Ariana Grande Where: New York City, New York, United States When: 07 Jan 2025 Credit: MediaPunch/INSTARimages
I don’t think Lily’s essay will have any pull on the academy. I could totally see Ariana winning.
I agree. I can’t decide where to stand on this one. I’m not sure I can say that her hard work and talent shouldn’t be recognized because she is a cheater. Cheating makes her a person I don’t ever want to be friends with, but it is not a crime (by law I mean). Jack Nicholson has several Oscars and he certainly was a known cheater.
She gave a good performance but I found myself so distracted with her plastic surgery / the unnatural way her face moves and how thin / unhealthy / fragile she looks these days. Not saying this as an insult. It truly kept taking me out of the movie.
Also, cheating is normal currency in Hollywood, actually scratch that… it’s normal currency in that industry at large.
I agree that nobody in the Academy will be swayed by that essay.
Yeah, Ariana Grande is not an amazing actress. She’s decent, maybe good depending on the role (like in wicked), but there were way better actresses to choose from this year. I have no idea how she got nominated at all considering there were so many amazing choices this year.
I would actually love for Cynthia and Ariane to win because they were both brilliant.
…they were!
I don’t know if it’s her new coloring, but she looks really sickly and frail lately .
It is the awful hair color.
..and the very obvious weight loss. She probably only lost 5 lb but on her tiny frame, that’s enough to make her look emaciated. At the risk of doing the thing I hate and speculating, I hope it’s due to her busy promotional schedule–she’s on her feet a lot and maybe forgetting to eat–and not something more serious.
She’s been looking like that for two years now. Even in the movie.
I watched Wicked last night and LOVED. Both actresses were amazing and definitely deserve to win.
I was really surprised at how good she was. She’s a little past my time, so I don’t know any of her songs besides the one about having problems or whatever, lol. And even her gossipy antics dont always register for me. So I went in with not a lot of expectations for her and ended up really enjoying her in the film. She was perfect as Glinda. I dont know if that makes her a serious contender here, but I wasn’t surprised at her nomination.
I was surprised that Jon Chu wasn’t nominated, but I wonder if a lot of voters were thinking they would nominate him next year for the second part.
I became a mom at 40 to a now almost 23 year old. I watched a lot of the Nickelodian shows with them, including Victorious. I remember “tiny Ari” on that show. She was so funny and talented. I’m not a huge fan of her music, but have watched her career and my kiddo still loves her. Funnily enough, my husband didn’t really watch these shows with us, so when we all went to see Wicked on Thanksgiving eve after dinner, his comment after the movie was “Who was the Glinda actress? She was really, really good.” LOL! Yes, he lives under a rock!
She might win.
I thought Wicked was excellent! As their characters, Ari was hilarious and heartfelt, Cynthia was powerful and inspiring.
I just can’t like her, after her racial switchups. She and her team have been scrubbing clips and compilations of her previous AAV accent from before, now that she’s decided she’s white again. Her saying “dis my cookie, dis my juice” in an interview will always make me cringe and laugh.
If she lands the Audrey Hepburn role I’ll be so disappointed.
The cheating stuff is gross but I don’t think that really sways academy voters does it? I feel like they don’t care.
OMG, there was a very funny clip, people edited one of her current interviews with the one a few years ago. She is interviewing her black persona. The difference is so blatant. Her team sent copyright complaint and made it remove. She knows she can’t win the oscar voters with her black persona.
Oh my god, I saw that too! It illustrates, very starkly, the difference between how she presented herself then vs now.
While she is very talented, I can’t get over how terrible of a person she is. She’ll forever be known as SpongeBob homewrecker for this movie and she’ll be judged for that for years to come.
Glad she got the nod but she’s not worthy of an Oscar; she’s worthy of an honourable mention, at best.
Also, she’s much too short to play Audrey Hepburn who was literally too tall to advance her career as a ballerina. So many better options than this tiny troll.
She’ll never be AH.
Yeah, this nomination is a f*cking joke. She gave a great performance but nowhere near deserving of such an accolade. In fact, she took the spot that belongs to Margaret Qualley.
I was absolutely delighted by Wicked and Ariana really was very good in it. I was able to put aside her messiness to just enjoy the film.
Your experience with Wicked is pretty much how I’d describe mine. Although I’d add I found it a bit long.
She was great in the role but I can’t with her as a person, even before the SpongeBob Sidepiece events during the filming. She does not seem like a good person.
Ariana did an amazing job in Wicked and she has a good chance to win the Oscar. Her main competition is Zoe Saladana, and while Zoe is great, Emilia Perez is a very average movie.
Ariana had a higher bar to clear, and very few outside her fan base knew she would do extremely well as Glinda. I hope she gets the Audrey Hepburn role, but it sounds like Rooney Mara is still cast.
We dont know Ari personally, and the homewrecker term is always used to shame women, not men, which is wrong. If anything, Ethan is the homewrecker because he broke his vows, not Ari. And we dont know the situation between Ari and her ex.
Women knowingly sleeping with the married men aren’t innocent. Come on now. She knew he was married and had a newborn baby at home with a postpartum wife. It is shameful both for Ethan and Ari.
Ariana is the one who released “The Boy is Mine” after all this mess; that’s what kind of removes the plausible deniability 🧐😂
@Crystal: And she had another song years ago, “…break up with your girlfriend, cuz I’m bored…” Fun little jaunty and unproblematic tune. (Deep sarcasm.)
I am so not an Ari fan (the cheating, Pete Davidson) but I kind of love that she thanked herself before anyone else after the pejorative Academy thanks. It reminds me of the montage scene in the beginning of Barbie when one of the Barbies wins an award and says ‘I’d like to thank myself because I worked hard and I totally deserve this.’ It was an awesome moment for me because I feel like so many women rarely acknowledge that they deserve praise and thanks.
I just can’t believe every Ariana Grande output will be prefaced with:
“Academy Award Nominee”
Who woulda thunk??😉😉😉
I’ve listened to the audiobook of “Wicked” twice since the movie came out…I was SHOCKED how much I loved it…I wish/hope a series is done based on the books❣️
Regarding the movie? It’s STILL up in the air whether I will watch…Ariana is whateva for me…but I got REAL BEEF 🤬 regarding what Cynthia has said about American Black folks in the past…I have NEVA watched her work and doubt that will change.
I always enjoy your posts Lala11_7! Thank you for reminding me about her horrible comments. There’s been so much awfulness lately I had actually forgotten them. Shoot. That was terrible. No excuse for it.
True, Ari isn’t innocent, but men who sleep with knowingly married women aren’t innocent. I am focusing in the word “homewrecker”. Ethan broke his vows to his wife Lilly, knowing he had a newborn and his postpartem wife moved to England for his career. He wrecked his own home.
We can certainly question Ari’s morals, but can’t deny her talent. I will always be a fan. As for her marriage, we dont know if her then husband cheated on her, and we never will because he signed an NDA. We dont know what officialy caused the demise of her marriage because we haven’t heard from Dalton like we heard from Lilly.
She quickly made sure her husband was muzzled. Then, conveniently wrote songs implying he was a cheater. After his sister made a post about his brother being silenced by NDA and people not knowing the truth and believing lies, Ari posted to her fans not to attack anyone. She might be one of the best singers out there, but she certainly lacks morals in her personal life. I would never use the word “homewrecker”. Both Ari and Ethan hurt a postpartum woman taking caring of her baby. They robbed her of the most vulnerable time of a woman’s life. Ethan didn’t do it alone. You don’t have a free card to hurt people just because you aren’t married to them. Ari also knows how cheating affects children, since her dad did the same thing to her mother. Ethan’s baby is gonna grow up and learn all of this one day.
Signing a prenup and NDA would be standard protocol for a star of Ari’s stature. Dalton is a grown man and did not have a gun to his head. Using his free will, he signed the NDA and received $1.25 million to keep his mouth shut. We have no idea if his sister is telling the truth or not, she was not part of the marriage. She could be repeating what her brother told her, or she could be trying to make her brother look better. Either way, it looks like he found another girlfriend and moved on quickly.
It is true that both Ethan and Ari hurt Lilly, and Lilly has every right to speak out about it. Several marriages have survived cheating, and if Ethan had made amends, instead of proudly stepping out with Ari, he might’ve been able to save the relationship. The responsibility was and is on him to do that. Cheating affects everything and everyone.
Ari’s recent music may or may not be autobiographical. She wisely hasn’t confirmed. Her music definitely implies that Dalton cheated first and was mentally abusive; in the song, “The Boy is Mine”, she takes responsibility for all the tears. But again, she could have gained inspiration from outside her personal life, or taken artistic liberties and exaggerated her situation for dramatic effect.
I don’t care for her as a person or for her music. But she is undeniably very talented. She was excellent in “Wicked,” which I thought was an impressive and entertaining movie, if not a great one. Isabella Rosellini was compelling in “Conclave,” but it was a much smaller role and IMO not as challenging. I don’t know if the messy affair and its fallout will hurt Ariana or not. She could win.
Putting aside Ariana’s messy personal life, she has always been extraordinarily talented. She has amazing comedic chops (check out her SNL skits) and can sing her ASS off. I was impressed with how she trained herself to sing in a different, operatic style. And both she and Cynthia sang everything live on set.
The nomination is well deserved.
I disagree that her affair makes her off-limits for an Oscar. She is not a pedophile, rapist, murderer–and I’m sure many men in all the arts could add these crimes to their resumes (sorry, can’t find the accent mark I need) and they suffer NO consequences. None. So to deny her an Oscar because of a messy affair? Hell, no. That said, she’s made herself look like an elf with that pin-thin figure and all the plastic surgery. Judgey? Yes. But, again, not a no for the Oscar.
Sorry. Pixie, not elf. She looks like a pixie.
God help me, but I am happy for Arianna. I hope this and turning 30 has given her the maturity now. To not be a problematic person. And think before she licks another donut. Or gets googly eyes for a married man again.
My gut tells me the Academy voters are going to skip Wicked nominees this year. And will sweep categories after Wicked: For Good, comes out in November. Like they did with the LOTR movies.