Grande to Make A Return to the Big Screen

Kelsy Brown

Staff Writer

Global pop star and Grammy nominated actress, Ariana Grande, has revealed in a recent interview that she is going to be taking a step back from pop music. Following her immense success starring in the 2024 film Wicked, Grande has decided to focus solely on her acting career for the next decade of her life, which she revealed in the Las Culturistas podcast.

Grande started her career on Broadway in 13 the Musical in 2008. From her time on the Broadway stage, her acting career launched as she starred as the beloved character Cat Valentine in Nickelodeon’s “Victorious” and its spinoff show, “Sam and Cat.”

After her time on Nickelodeon, Grande shifted her career to focus on her music rather than acting, as she has released seven studio albums since 2013. Grande has become one of the most influential pop stars of this generation. She has received two Grammy’s and eighteen nominations.

Her 2024 album Eternal Sunshine had debuted at number one on the Billboard charts, and she has 82.8 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Despite her enormous musical success, Grande has chosen to focus on growing her acting career. This may not be a shock to some fans, as Eternal Sunshine was her first studio album since 2020, which is almost double of Grande’s previous breaks between albums.

Grande was a guest on the Las Culturistas podcast, hosted by her Wicked co-star, Bowen Yang, and Matt Roger. She revealed that she cannot see herself producing pop music at the same rate that she has over the last ten years of her music career. On the podcast, Grande stated, “I think I love acting; I love musical theater. I think reconnecting with this part of myself who started in musical theater and who loves comedy—it heals me to do that.”

However, Grande music fans should not be worried because Grande will still be producing pop music, just not at the same speed as her previous work. On the same podcast episode, Grande stated, “I’m always going to make music, I’m always going to go onstage, I’m always going to do pop stuff, I pinky promise.”

Grande is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Glinda and Wicked has been nominated for nine other Oscars, including Best Picture. Grande is set to star in Wicked: For Good, the heavily anticipated sequel to Wicked, which is set to release in Nov. of 2025, where she will reprise her role as Glinda.