Ariana Grande almost said goodbye to music for good — until Wicked gave her a reason to stay.
In a revealing new interview on Shut Up Evan with Evan Ross Katz, the 32-year-old Grammy-winning artist opened up about the personal transformation she experienced while filming the Wicked movies, admitting she had secretly planned to end her music career before stepping into Glinda’s glittering shoes.
“[Playing Glinda] has done so much for Ariana. It has totally rearranged everything about my relationship to creating, you know. I didn’t think I was going to make an album ever again when I left for London,” she said. “That was kind of my secret, but I didn’t think I was going to, you know.”
After her 2020 album Positions and its 2019 tour, Grande quietly took a step back from recording to focus on acting — specifically, her lifelong dream of joining the Wicked universe. But she soon found that embodying Glinda rekindled her love for creating.
“Through the act of performing it and Glinda’s certainty and Glinda’s belief in herself totally ignited something, a strength in me that I missed, that I really needed,” she said. “So I learned a lot from her as a character who learns so much over the course of these two films and has to look at herself in the mirror constantly and sort of peel away at the pieces of her that don’t feel aligned. So I do think that I was kind of forced to do that alongside her.”
The result? A renewed artistic spark — and a brand new album, Eternal Sunshine, which Grande says came straight from the heart. “I felt like just a genuine spark, like a reconnection and inspiration and something, I mean, maybe I missed it,” she explained. “Maybe it’s as simple as I missed it. But I do feel like you have to miss things in order to learn to become better for them.”
Grande’s next chapter includes the Eternal Sunshine Tour, which she describes as a “healing” experience for both her and her fans. “Something inside is saying I have to do it,” she shared. “And I’m grateful for that because I don’t think I would have said that about a tour forever ago.”
She continued, “I think putting out the deluxe informed me that I had to do it because I really felt like I’m going to be really sad if I don’t sing this album live. I love this album, and I need to sing it. And I think that would be a really special experience for me and my fans.”
While Grande hinted that another tour might not happen “for a long time,” this one feels like the perfect full-circle moment — a celebration of resilience, rediscovery, and artistic joy.
