a self-taped audition, four years of work, two films and an academy award nomination — for a part she had wanted since she was a teenager.
the short answer
she plays glinda in the two-part film adaptation of wicked — the first released in november 2024, wicked: for good in november 2025. she got the part from a self-taped audition, the two films were shot back to back in the uk across roughly a year and a half, and the first earned her an academy award nomination for best supporting actress in 2025.
the casting nobody expected
the industry's read on her in 2021 was pop star who acts occasionally. that description is wrong in a specific and checkable way: she was on broadway at fourteen, in the musical 13, two years before any television. the singing was never the second career — the sitcom is the interruption in the story, not the origin of it.
she self-taped, which at her level of fame is a genuinely unusual thing to do — it is the process for actors who need to prove something rather than for names being offered a part. she has said she had wanted glinda since she was a teenager, which given the broadway background is not the retrospective story it would be from most pop musicians.
what the performance does
the trap in glinda is that she is written funny, and playing her only funny produces a very long two films. the performance's actual achievement is that the comedy is technically precise — the timing is stage timing, tightened for a camera — and there is real singing underneath it that is never allowed to become the point.
in wicked: for good, where the character stops being funny, that groundwork is what the second half spends itself on. it is a two-film performance rather than one performance done twice.
one production, two releases
both films were shot as a single continuous production in the uk from late 2022, then released a year apart. that is why the four-year gap in her discography exists: positions was 2020, and eternal sunshine was written around a film schedule and released in march 2024, between the two films.
it is also why the on-set friendship with cynthia erivo reads the way it does. eighteen months is a long time to be the only two people in a scene.
the nomination
best supporting actress, at the ceremony in early 2025. she did not win, and the nomination is the significant part: a pop musician nominated for a film musical gets called a stunt by default, and the ten nominations the film took overall — including best picture — made that reading difficult to sustain.
what it changed for her is simpler than an award. it reintroduced her to an enormous audience with no relationship to her music at all, which is the rarest thing a thirty-year career can be handed.
questions people ask
who plays glinda in wicked?
ariana grande, in both wicked (2024) and wicked: for good (2025). cynthia erivo plays elphaba.
how did ariana grande get cast in wicked?
she self-taped an audition — an unusual route for somebody at her level of fame, and one that suggests she was proving something rather than being offered a part.
did ariana grande win an oscar for wicked?
no. she was nominated for best supporting actress in 2025 and did not win. the film received ten nominations overall, including best picture.
were both wicked films made at once?
yes. they were shot back to back in the uk as a single production from late 2022 and released a year apart, in november 2024 and november 2025.
can ariana grande actually sing the wicked songs?
she was a broadway performer before she was a recording artist — she was cast in the musical 13 at fourteen. the technical singing is the least surprising part of the performance.