Ethan Slater says falling in love with Ariana Grande as the world watched was “really hard.”
The couple started dating while filming the upcoming adaptation of Broadway’s “Wicked” and, while Slater recalls that time as “beautiful,” he’s also decrying the flurry of negative chatter about them as “really difficult.”
“Obviously, it was a really super big year,” the Tony Award-nominated Broadway actor told GQ in an interview published Wednesday. “And I think there was something that was really difficult about things in your private life being commented on and looked at by the public.”
“There were a lot of big changes in private lives that were really happening, so it’s really hard to see people who don’t know anything about what’s happening commenting on it and speculating, and then getting things wrong about the people you love,” he continued.
Last summer, Grande called it quits with her ex-husband, Dalton Gomez, after two years of marriage, and Slater separated from his high school sweetheart, Lilly Jay, five years after their November 2018 nuptials. The timing fueled rumors that the two had left their spouses for each other.
Grande, in an interview with Vanity Fair this month, “dispute[d] specific allegations” without getting into details, but called negative gossip about her new partner flat-out “bullshit.”
“The most disappointing part was to see so many people believe the worst version of it,” she said.
“There couldn’t be a less accurate depiction of a human being than the one that the tabloids spread about him,” the singer added. “No one on this earth tries harder or spreads themselves thinner to be there for the people that he loves and cares about.”
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Grande has certainly had high-profile relationships before, but while sources close to her romance with Slater told People that they only started dating after he was separated, Jay herself — who shares a young child with him — suggested otherwise to Page Six last July.
“Not a girl’s girl,” she said of Grande. “My family is just collateral damage.”
Slater, who stars as the Munchkin who falls in love with Grande’s Glinda the Good Witch in the upcoming “Wicked” film, certainly seems content.
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“I’m just really, really proud of Ari and the work she’s done on this,” he told GQ. “She’s poured herself into it.”