Editor's Note: This article was updated on Nov. 22, 2024 with more detail about the Wicked movie and its release.
Long before Ariana Grande was known as a global pop superstar, Broadway's Kristin Chenoweth was one of the first to recognize her inimitable talent.
"She was maybe 7 or 8," Chenoweth recalled of meeting the singer for the first time during a 2019 stop at "Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen." At the time, the Broadway veteran was starring as the original Glinda in "Wicked," and a young Ariana had won an auction to meet her backstage at the Gershwin Theater.
"Her mom and grandma brought her back and she sang a little bit of 'Popular,'" Chenoweth continued. "And I thought, 'Well you're pretty good.'"
Fast forward to more than 15 years later, and Grande herself is stepping into the role made famous by Chenoweth for the big screen adaptation of "Wicked" — a dream casting that has Ozians, munchkins and Arianators alike exclaiming, "We couldn't be happier!"
Directed by Jon M. Chu, the musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz also stars Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba opposite Grande and tells the enchanting story of Glinda and Elphie's unlikely friendship before they became the witches of Ozian lore. A massive undertaking translating beloved songs like "The Wizard and I," "What Is This Feeling?" and "Defying Gravity" to the silver screen, the film will be split in two parts; the first just hit theaters nationwide on Nov. 22. (Part two will premiere almost exactly one year later, on Nov. 21, 2025.)
The role of Glinda is a complete full-circle moment for Grande, a proudly self-described "theater kid" — one whose professional career actually started out on the Broadway stage.
On September 16, 2008, a then-14-year-old Ari made her Broadway debut as Charlotte in Jason Robert Brown's all-teen musical 13. The composer had won acclaim (and a Tony Award) for his previous works like Parade and The Last Five Years, but the show — which was centered around a group of 13-year-olds growing up, hitting puberty and surviving the horrors of middle school in small-town Indiana — only ran for a total of 105 performances before closing in January of the following year.
Even still, the show gave Grande a small taste of the spotlight, and in an unearthed interview with MTV News from the time, the future pop star adorably predicted exactly where the next 15 years would take her. "Whatever I end up doing with my career, I really hope that it's in this sort of business. Whether it's, you know, being on Broadway or recording albums, I really just hope I'm always singing and acting and dancing and, you know, making movies would work, too!" she manifested, citing everyone from Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey to India.Arie and Imogen Heap as a few of her musical idols.
Though her time on the Broadway stage was short-lived, Grande quickly pivoted to television, landing the role of Cat Valentine on the Nickelodeon sitcom "Victorious" (which ran from 2010 to 2013) and its subsequent spin-off, "Sam & Cat," alongside Jennette McMurdy. The pair of kiddie sitcoms gave the teenaged star a platform to both build a fan base of loyal tweens and regularly show off her musical prowess — a harbinger of the international pop fame soon to come.
By late 2011, the burgeoning triple threat had signed with Republic Records (then known as Universal Republic) and released her debut single "Put Your Hearts Up." However, it was "Popular Song," her 2012 collaboration with MIKA, that landed Ariana her very first entry on the Billboard Hot 100. And what do you know? The campy duet interpolated none other than "Popular," the very same song from "Wicked" that she'd sung to Kristin Chenoweth all those years earlier.
Grande's debut album, Yours Truly, arrived in September 2013, with "Popular Song" joining the track list alongside hits like "The Way" featuring Mac Miller, "Baby I" and the Big Sean-assisted "Right There."
Before the album came out, a young Ari was manifesting her future "Wicked" casting in early press interviews. In a sit-down with KiddNation, the then-teenaged star was asked which witch she'd rather play one day. In hindsight, her answer was, well, one could say a vision — almost like a prophecy: “Glinda. For sure. I think that Elphaba’s singing part would be more fun…but I think I’m more of a [Glinda].” (Naturally the proud theater kid then proceeded to crush a round of "Wicked singing" trivia, nailing every lyric to Glinda's verse in “For Good.”)
Over the course of her next two records, 2014's My Everything and 2016's Dangerous Woman, Ariana shot to the pop stratosphere. She landed seven more top 10 hits on the Hot 100 (including "Break Free," "Bang Bang," "Love Me Harder" and "Side to Side") and headlined two sold-out arena tours, joining the upper echelon of singers she'd spent her life admiring.
But even as she became a bonafide household name, the singer stayed connected to her theater roots. Months before Dangerous Woman arrived, Grande popped up as a special guest at one of Jason Robert Brown's cabaret-style concerts in Los Angeles, where she sang "The Lamest Place in the World" and "Brand New You" from "13" — the latter with Broadway luminary Shoshana Bean — as well as deep cut "Getting Out" from 2005's "Wearing Someone Else's Clothes."
The two also got to reunite for the deluxe version of Dangerous Woman for the aptly titled "Jason's Song (Gave It All Away)." While the jazzy, piano-inflected bonus cut was an undeniable outlier to the album's more R&B-leaning sound, it still served as the project's third and final promotional single; Grande even performed it live on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" in September 2016.
By the end of that year, Grande tapped into her musical theater roots again, but with an altogether different kind of role: Penny Pingleton in NBC's Hairspray Live! Alongside the likes of Dove Cameron, Jennifer Hudson, Garrett Clayton, and Broadway royalty like Chenoweth, Harvey Fierstein and Martin Short, the superstar brought both a daffy charm and her powerhouse voice to the show's lovable sidekick and certified "checkerboard chick," belting out fan favorite numbers like "Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now," "Without Love" and "You Can't Stop the Beat."
"I started doing theater when I was younger, I have always been a huge theater nerd," Grande gushed from the Hairspray Live! press junket red carpet, Chenoweth by her side. "And a lot of people don't actually know that this is, like, my soul. It's like my heart." ("Her DNA!" Chenoweth proudly piped in.)
"So being able to do this production that I grew up singing every single day in the car… I worship this role," she added. "And also working with so many people who I have grown up worshiping is just, I can't say it enough times, it's so inspiring and so crazy and so beautiful and it'll never get old to me."
In between her next two albums — 2018's Sweetener and 2019's thank u, next, which both debuted atop the Billboard 200 — the megastar returned to NBC for "A Very Wicked Halloween," a special musical celebration of "Wicked"'s first 15 years on Broadway. For her supreme performance of Elphaba's Act 1 showstopper "The Wizard and I," Grande sported dazzling green lips as footage of Chenoweth and Idina Menzel played on a giant projector behind her.
Though most of thank u, next chronicled Grande's headline-making, whirlwind romance (and breakup) with comedian Pete Davidson, she once again found a way to inject a little Broadway on the album. But this time, the theater tribute became one of the biggest hits of her career: a little post-breakup bop known as "7 Rings."
Spinning the real-life tale of Ari treating her besties to a shopping spree at Tiffany & Co. in the wake of her split with Davidson, the GRAMMY-nominated trap-pop hit's ingenious melody came from quite the unexpected ditty — an interpolation of "My Favorite Things" from Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music.
Instead of waxing nostalgic over raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, though, the superstar cooed over, "Breakfast at Tiffany's and bottles of bubbles/ Girls with tattoos who like getting in trouble/ Lashes and diamonds, ATM machines/ Buy myself all of my favorite things" on the braggadocious track. (Interestingly, she also chose to sign 90 percent of the song's royalties over to the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization ahead of its release — a truly unheard-of split in the age of the modern music industry, particularly for a song that went on to spend eight weeks at the top of the Hot 100.)
The song became Grande's second consecutive hit to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (following "thank u, next"), breaking numerous streaming records in the process. And for the self-described "theater nerd," the fusion of pop and musical theater was not just a commercial success — it was also an authentic recalibration of her point of view as a recording artist.
"We started at home base — me," she said in a 2018 Billboard cover story honoring her as Woman of the Year. "And then we went in this place where I kind of played the game for a little bit, and did the big, big, big pop records. Then we slowly started incorporating my soul back into it — and that's where we've landed again with thank u, next."
Grande spent the majority of 2019 touring in support of Sweetener and thank u, next, including headlining Coachella and launching the Sweetener World Tour. The latter — which was later released as the live album k bye for now (swt live) and the Netflix concert documentary "Ariana Grande: Excuse Me, I Love You" — featured another Broadway homage, as the singer performed a coquettish cover of "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" from the 1938 Cole Porter musical "Leave It to Me!" for the show's final intermission.
The tour's third and final leg officially concluded on December 22, 2019, just months before the entire world shut down due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Like many homebound artists, Grande used her sizable talents to make a difference during the crisis. And though everyone surely remembers her delectable take on "I Won't Say (I'm in Love)" for "The Disney Family Singalong" (playing both Meg and, yes, all five of the Muses at once), the singer also joined forces with Jason Robert Brown once again for a special one-night-only concert benefiting musicians affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the occasion, Grande delivered a touching rendition of "Still Hurting" from 2014's The Last Five Years. In a statement following the virtual concert, Brown acknowledged just how remarkable her talent remains.
"I've known Ari since she was an astonishingly talented 14-year-old," he said. "We've gotten to make music together a couple of times throughout the years, and whenever it happens, I am struck by how comfortable our collaboration is and how relentlessly hard she works to get things exactly right. My text said, 'Do you know my song "Still Hurting"?' And her response was, 'Am I a person?' Ari was in."
By 2021, the world had begun to cautiously rouse itself from its pandemic slumber, and that November, Ariana and Erivo were announced as Glinda and Elphaba in the long-awaited adaptation of "Wicked" on the silver screen. (Even Erivo knew the scale of Grande's casting, sending her a bouquet of flowers with a note that read, "the part was made for you.")
When filming reached the halfway point in April 2023, Grande shared a photo of herself standing under a rainbow on set alongside a gratitude-filled (and awestruck) caption. "I don't know what to do or say," she wrote, "to be here in Oz where everyday is a life changing one.
"Savoring every millisecond left with my Galinda," the superstar added, "(although she'll be with me irrevocably, forever). she shows me so many new things every day. I hope this isn't all a dream because as present as i am attempting to be, it sure does feel like one… my fellow Ozians. my heart will be stuck here forever."
As Wicked’s premiere drew closer and Grande embarked on a whirlwind global press tour with her costars, fans' excitement for the film only ratcheted higher and higher. And the newly crowned Good Witch of the North proved more than capable of honoring the title and giant pink bubble bestowed upon her — whether proving she knows about "Popular" by correcting a misprinted lyric in the number's official preview video ("it's 'ploys' !!!!!!"), channeling her childhood dreams into a tearjerker of a commercial promoting the movie, or standing arm-in-arm with Chenoweth, Irivo and Menzel at the film's star-studded Los Angeles premiere.
She also opened up about just how much nabbing the role meant to her ("If it hadn't happened, I might have ended up in an insane asylum," she joked during one panel) and shot down the notion that she was handed the part due to her status as one of pop music's reigning superstars.
"People sometimes say to me, 'You had to audition?' Of course! Are you out of your gourd?" Grande exclaimed in a November appearance on the Sentimental Men Podcast. "It's Wicked! And it requires a totally different skill set than people know me for and have seen me do anything like. It's Wicked! That's the most respectful thing! It has to be earned…period!"
And it seems Grande's time in Oz has not only left a handprint on her heart, but also fundamentally altered her path down the yellow brick road of her career. Weeks before the movie musical's premiere, the two-time GRAMMY winner made a perhaps surprising admission to her Wicked co-star Bowen Yang and his co-host Matt Rogers on their podcast Las Culturistas.
"I'm gonna say something so scary," she prefaced. "I'm always going to make music, I'm always going to go on stage, I'm always going to do pop stuff, I pinky promise. But I don't think doing it at the rate I've been doing it for the past 10 years is where I see the next 10 years.
"Reconnecting with this part of myself who started in musical theater, and who loves comedy, and it heals me to do that — finding roles to use these parts of myself and put them in little homes and characters and voices and songs," Grande continued. "Whatever makes sense, or whatever roles we see fit, or where I could really do a good job or honor the material, I would really love to. I think it's a lot better for me."
So as audiences witness Grande's debut in a role more than two decades in the making, it seems the new Glinda's heart remains in Oz — proving that her childhood wish really has taken her somewhere over the rainbow.