Ariana Grande




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Image Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy/Cindy Ord/Getty Images

Ariana Grande subtly addressed the rumors about her relationship with boyfriend Ethan Slater on the Zach Sang Show on February 26. While promoting her new album Eternal Sunshine, the 30-year-old singer opened up about how she’s dealt with the online buzz about her personal life — namely the rumors that she and Ethan, 31, cheated on their respective partners when they started dating on the set of Wicked in 2023.

“We know this about the tabloids and about the media. We selectively remember that this is what the tabloids do to people, especially women, based on whether or not we like the person,” the Grammy Award winner explained. “We selectively remember that. We selectively leave space for humanness, for nuance.

“They don’t leave space for that, well they do for their friends and their family, it’s selective,” Ariana continued, referencing how the media framed her relationship with Ethan. “They turn it off when that aligns with a version of a person that they have in their head that they want to believe is true.”

Ariana declined to outright address the cheating rumors, but she did open up about how she felt about her love life becoming media fodder over the past year. “I feel like we don’t need to go into any specifics, but, of course, there’s like an insatiable frustration, inexplicable, hellish feeling with watching people, misunderstand the people you love and you and anything,” she said.

Ariana and Ethan first met in late 2022 on the set of the upcoming live-action adaptation of Wicked. Within a few months, Ariana and her now-ex-husband, Dalton Gomez, quietly split. By July 2023, multiple outlets reported that Ariana and Dalton had separated and that she was dating Ethan. That month, Ethan filed for divorce from his now-estranged wife Lilly Jay. Ariana finalized her divorce from Dalton in October 2023. 

After Ariana and Ethan’s relationship was confirmed by the media in July, Lilly Jay released a public statement where she slammed the “Into You” singer. “[Ariana’s] the story really. Not a girl’s girl,” Lilly Jay told Page Six. “My family is just collateral damage. The story is her and Dalton.” Ethan’s ex also told Page Six at the time that she’s focused on being “a good mom” to the former couple’s son, who was born in 2022.

Ethan Slater
Ethan Slater and Lilly Jay at the Elton John AIDS Foundation benefit gala in November 2018 (Photo: Theo Wargo/Getty Images)

Ariana is releasing her seventh album on March 8, with new songs that clap back at her haters. Her first single off the album, “Yes, And?”, clearly states that she’s done with online bullying and criticism. In her interview on Zach Sang‘s podcast, Ariana admitted that making her new album that is partly inspired by the hate she’s gotten might be her “absolute worst idea” ever.

“I’m so nervous. Because pieces of it touch on things that are real and then piece of it are also part of the concept,” she said about Eternal Sunshine, her first album in four years. “So what is that separation? It’s so scary to leave it up to these selective memory people to decipher,” Ariana added. “It’s scary. But I digress. It’s too late.”