Ariana Grande Reflects on Tabloid Attention: “We Selectively Leave Space for Humanness”

Ariana Grande reflected on how tabloid attention affects audience’s perception of celebrities, saying that a story’s believability often depends on preconceived approval of public figures.

“We selectively remember that this is what the tabloids do to people, especially women, based on whether or not we like the person,” Grande said during an appearance on the Zach Sang Show.

“We selectively leave space for humanness, for nuance,” she continued, adding that readers of tabloids “don’t leave space for that.”

Grande, who will release her seventh album — Eternal Sunshine — next week, then specified her reflection, saying that readers will leave space for humanness “for their friends and family,” but that “they turn it off when that aligns with the version of a person that they have in their head that they want to believe is true.”

Grande’s comments come on the heels of a tumultuous series of headlines for the pop star. She recently finished filming the highly anticipated Wicked movies, the first of which released its trailer during the Super Bowl and will hit theaters in November. Last year, she and her ex-husband, Dalton Gomez, filed for divorce in September. Around the same time, she was reportedly romantically linked to her Wicked co-star, Ethan Slater.

Also last year, several of Grande’s songs were leaked to TikTok, where they amassed thousands of listens against the singer’s consent.

“Thank you so much. I’ll see you in jail. Literally,” Grande said this week of the leaks.

She later added, however, that the fan reaction to the songs was what inspired her to include reworked versions of the tracks on Eternal Sunshine.

“It was like a parody of this girl group vibe” she said, insinuating the songs were initially written for an unreleased TV show. “But [the fans] love it… It’s so corny, but it’s okay. I took the note and I kind of gave them Ariana’s version of that on the album.”

She continued, “They’re completely different now. So although you’ve heard them — because you stole them — they’re very different now.”

THR Newsletters