Ariana Grande’s Wicked Press Tour Seems To Be Getting More Attention Than Wicked Itself

Next week, Wicked finally comes out. The movie, the first in a two-part adaptation of a big Broadway musical, stars Ariana Grande as Galinda. Grande, who apparently just looks and talks like that now, has been promoting the film hard for basically an entire year, to the point where her own recent album eternal sunshine seemed to come and go without much notice. Grande goes everywhere with co-star Cynthia Erivo these days, and she is working very hard to eliminate all memories of her donut-licking pop-star self. She seems to be doing a very good job, as these things go, since she goes viral about once a day.

There was, for instance, the shocked and possibly horrified expression that Grande made upon hearing that a red-carpet interviewer met his partner and "95%" of his friends through Grande fandom.

There was also an apology for all the crying.

There was a thing about Grande correcting a commonly misheard lyric from one of the Wicked songs. This is not strictly press tour-related, but there was also the story about Wicked dolls being pulled from shelves because the packaging was sending kids to the porn site Wicked.com, not the actual website for the movie. In any case, Grande has been saying that she wants to do a lot more acting -- a lot more musical-theater acting, in particular -- so her pop stardom might be going on the back burner. We could see more press tours like this in the future.

That was a lot of stuff about the press tour for a movie that I don't intend to go see! Longtime Stereogum readers will not be shocked to learn that Scott made me post this. (I changed the headline. It was supposed to be "Ariana Grande's Wicked Press Tour Has Actually Been Pretty Charming" -- that's his assessment, not mine.) Scott went and found all the links and everything. The man is unhinged. Pray for him.