Ariana Grande is once again addressing how her speaking voice has changed in recent months, this time pointing out that male performers are rarely met with the same criticism she’s received for embodying her role as Glinda in the upcoming Wicked films.
While appearing as a guest on the Tuesday (July 9) episode of Evan Ross Katz’s Shut Up Evan podcast, the pop star opened up about her decision in June to explain why the sound of her voice sometimes changes. After a clip of her abruptly switching tones on Penn Badgley’s Podcrushed went viral last month, she’d commented on TikTok that she’d been “speaking like this for two years” on the set of the upcoming Wicked films and noted that using a higher register is better for her vocal health.
And on Katz’s show, Grande went into even more detail. “I did just spend a long time playing a character every single day and training my voice to do different things,” she said of her tenure as Glinda opposite Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba. “The voice is in the body, it’s an instrument, and muscle memory is a real thing. That’s a normal thing for people who, it’s their job to transform.”
The “Yes, And?” singer went on to marvel at how men in Hollywood are often praised when their characters carry over into their real-life personas, whereas she’s been made fun of online for the same thing. “You see male actors — sure, people make jokes here and there as well about everybody who experiences something like this — but it’s always after the fact that they’re like, ‘Oh, wow, how dedicated to his craft. What an amazing transformation! He’s a brilliant performer!’” she said. “And God forbid I sneeze like Glinda.”
“I had a job to do,” Grande added. “People change and habits happen. It’s a strange thing to be under such a microscope.”
The scrutiny she’s faced about her speech habits was just one of many topics the Grammy winner broached with Katz, who also asked Grande about why she deactivated her X account as well as her decision to gently call out body shaming with a vulnerable TikTok last year (something she called “impulsive,” but doesn’t regret). At one point, the pair discussed the reasons why the star has chosen to remain quiet throughout last year’s backlash to her romance with Wicked costar Ethan Slater, which they hinted at without referencing head on.
“There’s still a lot of misperceptions about everything out there,” Grande told Katz. “I’ve sent you so many drafts of things like, ‘I want to say this so badly!’ I always sleep on it and I always come back around to protecting and not taking that bait, because what I have discovered is that protecting my peace and my privacy and the actual details … sometimes when it would be addressing something, you would actually be exposing more of your actual real life.”
Listen to Grande’s Shut Up Evan interview below.
