This Hollywood Reporter cover is perfectly timed, and it shows that Ariana Grande is absolutely going for it. Oscar voting opened this week, and Ariana is coming for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. If you ask me, she has a decent shot at it. Zoe Saldana has been picking up most of the supporting-actress awards so far this season, but Emilia Perez’s campaign might be dead in the water. Isabella Rossellini is a sentimental favorite and it would be a great Hollywood story if Ingrid Bergman’s daughter won an Oscar for playing a nun. But Ariana is showing the AMPAS voters that she’s here to play hardball too. This THR piece is a masterclass of Oscar-campaign positioning, and I’m in awe of the team Ariana assembled to make this happen. Some highlights:

On her Oscar nom: “It’s a beautiful thing to feel like the work that I’m doing or have done is kind of, I suppose, I don’t know, enough or louder or whatever it is. This feeling that people are seeing me — like, actually me — it’s so silly because I’ve been seen for so long, but it feels like it’s maybe for the first time and it’s just different.”

She’s tired of her pop girl persona: “At a certain point, you get tired of that [pop star] character, because it is a character. There are pieces of you and your story that are woven throughout your songwriting, but then, because of the way it travels and becomes sensationalized, it gets away from you. And beneath all of it is just a girl from Boca who loves art, and I think that’s why it’s been such a deeply healing gift to disappear into this character — to take off one mask and put on another.”

She’s been working on getting cast as Glinda for years: “People who didn’t understand would say, ‘Oh, that’s so silly, they know how talented you are,’ and I was like, ‘That’s very nice, but Glinda requires so much. I have to be able to earn this and I don’t want it unless I’ve earned it.’ It became this beautiful evolution of getting to know myself beneath it all. I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I love this person underneath the drag.’ ”

She got her start on Broadway: “I really thought I’d be a Broadway girl forever. I mean, that was the dream: I’d be in New York City doing eight shows a week, and then maybe on the side I’d be able to do music, and some people would want to hear it.”

Working on ‘Victorious’ with Dan Schneider: “I’ve sort of talked about the protective measures that I think need to be put in place… [Therapy] and then some. I have dreams of a world where you’re not allowed to enter the entertainment industry without having it written in your contract, whether it’s with the record label or the production company, that there will be therapy multiple times a week and a support system. Being on a show that changes your life or releasing a song that changes your life exposes you to many forces, both love and hate, and there is no manual.”

The pile-on before the 2017 Manchester terrorist attack: “It was just a crazy time: All I wanted was to sing and for it to be about my work, and it felt like the more successful the music became, the more people tried to destroy me.” The pile-on arguably hit fever pitch in 2015, when a then-22-year-old Grande was caught on a leaked security video licking a doughnut she hadn’t purchased and proclaiming she “hates America.”…Then tragedy hit in Manchester, and suddenly all of it seemed so silly. Grande has said she went from “diva” to victim and hero virtually overnight.

Her relationship with Ethan Slater. The tabloid version of their love story suggests he left his wife and baby for her, though Grande, among others, has denounced that narrative, stating in an interview with Vanity Fair last fall: “There couldn’t be a less accurate depiction of a human being.” (Grande, too, was married; though she and real estate broker Dalton Gomez had already separated by the time rumors of a new relationship had surfaced.) As she’s gotten older, Grande says she’s felt less compelled to defend herself and her choices, which is not to say the rumors and misinformation don’t get under her skin. “It’ll never be unpainful,” she says. “But also, I walk with the awareness that I’m an artist and this is a path that I’ve chosen, and so I just try to protect myself so that I never start to resent the art.”

[From THR]

They saved the worst for last – the Ethan Slater thing is probably the most damaging issue for her Oscar campaign. It’s fine when a pop star has a messy romantic life and writes songs like “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored.” That’s not going to affect Ari’s pop star image, in fact, it enhances it. It’s quite another when the star of a major, family-friendly musical two-parter had a torrid affair with her Wicked costar and he left his wife and baby for Ariana. Not only that, Ethan’s ex-wife Lilly Jay is clearly a million times more sympathetic than the woman taunting her with lyrics like “Why do you care so much whose d–k I ride?”

Anyway, other than the Ethan Slater stuff, Ariana’s Oscar campaign is going very well and she might even pull it off. I thought she was great in Wicked, and this THR piece convinced me that she gave up a lot to secure the role and do the best for Glinda. While I’m paying attention to the messy romantic stuff, I bet most Oscar voters don’t care that much. But we’ll see.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of THR.