Ariana Grande is dancing through life as she begins the promotional cycle for Wicked.
Two months after the project’s first trailer premiered during the 2024 Super Bowl in February, the pop star and her castmates debuted an exclusive first look at the live-action duology at this year’s CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Wednesday — after which she shared a handful of sweet photos with Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Michelle Yeoh and more on Instagram.
Kicking off her post with a pair of glamour shots, Grande elegantly models her Glinda-esque Oscar De La Renta dress — layered with pieces of pink fabric made to look like flower petals — in two photos from the event. The following snaps find the “Yes, And?” singer making kissy faces with Erivo, Bailey and Yeoh, as well as boyfriend Ethan Slater (who also co-stars in Wicked) and Jeff Goldblum. In one group shot, the whole Ozian gang poses for a mirror selfie at a makeup station backstage.
Grande also shared a video of her and Erivo introducing footage from Wicked onstage at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace during Universal Pictures’ Focus Features Presentation, speaking in front of a large crowd of fans armed with light-up wands. “When I was 10 years old, I saw Wicked on Broadway for the first time,” she says in the clip, earning laughs after following up with a joke: “It was only five years ago.”
She and Erivo then joined hands and walked offstage, a photo of which the R.E.M. Beauty founder included in her post. “i am so incredibly giddy and lucky to be your sister,” Grande wrote of Erivo, also sharing the picture on her Story. “i cannot wait for every step of the way with you.”
Resharing another picture of her and Erivo with Bailey, Grande wrote, “my loves.”
The Grammy winner’s post follows a similar one from Goldblum, who posted a different angle of the group’s makeup mirror selfie and wrote, “Over the rainbow to be reunited with this magical family!”
Grande commented, “my heart !!!!!!!!!”
A separate fan video from the convention showed the singer and Slater holding hands as they walked through the venue, the SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical actor matching Grande in a pink shirt. The pair started dating while shooting Wicked in the U.K. last year, with Slater playing Boq, a munchkin boy who, ironically, has a crush on Grande’s Glinda.
The first of Jon M. Chu’s two-part film adaptations of the famed Stephen Schwartz musical — which itself was based on Gregory Maguire’s bestselling novel Wicked — arrives this Thanksgiving, with the second installment set to arrive a year later. In the meantime, Grande has been promoting her latest album Eternal Sunshine, which dropped March 8 and spent an immediate two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
And while Grande has seemingly shifted gears back to Wicked, the vocalist recently assured fans that the Eternal Sunshine era is far from over. “i cannot wait for everything that has yet to come within this eternal sunshine cycle (that has only just begun & may it never end),” she captioned a TikTok video of her recording vocals in the studio earlier this week. “thank you for your love.”
Watch Grande and Erivo introduce the Wicked first look at CinemaCon below.
