Ariana Grande Is Standing by Her SpongeBob

Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images

Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo have been appearing in their obligatory pink and green outfits since early this year. That was just the warm-up, though. With the movie coming out in November, the Wicked press tour is officially in full swing, and there’s a Vanity Fair cover to prove it. (Annoyingly, they’re wearing white — let’s stay on theme!) The joint profile is mostly about how the women are dear friends with chaotic schedules, but Grande took a moment to address the SpongeBob in the room.

As a reminder, Grande and her real-estate agent husband, Dalton Gomez, split last summer. Shortly after, tabloids reported that she and her Wicked co-star Ethan Slater (a.k.a. Broadway’s live-action SpongeBob) had begun seeing each other. This was a bit messy, because people who paid attention to these sorts of things thought Slater was still married to his high-school sweetheart. It got even messier when said high-school sweetheart gave a comment to “Page Six” saying that Grande is “not a girl’s girl” and that her family was “collateral damage.” Now, Grande is sharing her carefully worded side of the story.

“It definitely doesn’t get any easier, seeing some of the negativity that was birthed by disreputable tabloids,” Grande told Vanity Fair. “Of course, I went through a lot of life changes during the filming of this movie. A lot of people that were working on it did. We were away for two years. So, of course, I understand why it was a field day for the tabloids to sort of create something that paid their bills.”

Without spilling any real tea or even saying his name, Grande stood by her man. “The most disappointing part was to see so many people believe the worst version of it,” she said. “There is no one on this earth with a better heart, and that is something that no bullshit tabloid can rewrite in real life.”

In the world of mindful celebrity statements, this is a pretty good one. She (sort of) answered the question we all had, but didn’t get too defensive about it. Kudos to the team that worked on this. Of course, Grande did have a less polite word for the gossip rags.

“Honestly, it’s taken me a lot of hard work to be able to last this long and to heal certain parts of my relationship to fame and to what I do because of these tabloids that have been trying to destroy me since I was 19 years old,” she said. “But you know what? I’m 31 years old and I’m not a perfect person, but I am definitely deeply good, and I’m proud of who I’m becoming. I will never let disreputable evil tabloids ruin my life or my perception of what is real and good.”

That’s that on that! The singer told the magazine that she will “never go into certain details,” so don’t expect anything really juicy until she releases an impressively candid memoir in 40 years.