Ariana Grande Reveals Sentimental Reason She Chose to Go by Her Full Name in Wicked Credits

Just call her Ariana Grande-Butera.

The “imperfect for you” singer, 31, has revealed why she decided to use her birth name in the credits for her upcoming movie Wicked, the adaptation of the smash Broadway musical.

The singer and her costar Cynthia Erivo, 37, sat down for an interview with podcaster and journalist Justin Hill, who noted that Grande is credited with her “full grown-up name” on screen, adding, “I wanted to know the symbolism of the importance of that for you.”

“Technically, it’s my little girl name. It’s technically little [Ari’s] name,” she replied. Grande is her mother Joan’s last name; Butera is her father Ed’s. The two divorced when their daughter was 8 years old.

“I just feel like this experience was such a homecoming for me. I feel like I came home to myself in a lot of ways through what I learned from Glinda, from Elphaba,” she added, referencing the characters she and Erivo play. “That was my name when I went to see the show when I was 10 years old, and it felt like a really lovely way of honoring that. It felt really full-circle.”

Wicked tells the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West, the iconic antagonist from L. Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz.

But before the Wicked Witch became the fearsome villain we all know, she was young Elphaba Thropp (Erivo), a reserved and misunderstood girl born with green skin and incredible powers. At Shiz University, she meets fellow student Glinda (Grande), an aspiring sorceress.

The Broadway musical, which is loosely based on the Gregory Maguire book of the same name, opened on the Great White Way in 2003. 

Not long after the show debuted, Grande saw the show with her grandmother Marjorie and got to hang out with star Kristin Chenoweth, the original Glinda.

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“We ended up going backstage to meet the cast,” Grande said in a recent interview. “When I got to Kristin Chenoweth’s dressing room, she invited me in, and I just felt an immediate bond.” 

Chenoweth “gave me a wand and this little pink sparkly shower gel that I think I used a tiny drop of every day for the next three years, making sure it didn’t run out. And I believe there was a little actual magic in there,” she said.

Grande had a falling out with her father around 2013, but has spoken about reconnecting with him several years later.

Wicked is in theaters Nov. 22.