What the hell was going on on the set of Wicked?

“Movies are so weird now” Hugh Grant lamented back in march. “You know, in the old days, by the end of the second week, everyone would get drunk at night and have dinner and fall in love and all that.” Perhaps Ariana Grande took that as a challenge, because she’s bringing back old Hollywood in a big way. As a result of the Wicked off, it has sparked a new wave of tabloid drama that has the internet in a tailspin.

Grande is not new to her personal life becoming a public discussion (see: the It was Pete Davidson). But she has been deceptively quiet for the past few years. she got married and released an album during the pandemic, when pop stars couldn’t do traditional promotion. Entrenched in the normie era of hers, she launched makeup and served as a judge on The voice. She waited for his time before fulfilling a lifelong dream: to be cast as Gcute in the Wicked movie. And that’s when things started to get interesting again.

If you believe the tabloids, and yes, we’re going to have to suspend disbelief with the TMZ dates on this, folks, Grande and her husband Dalton Gomez couldn’t hack it long-distance in a post-pandemic world. Grande officially came out for the first time as (supposedly) a single girl at Wimbledon with her Wicked co-star Jonathan Bailey, where they sat down with Andrew Garfield, much to everyone’s delight. Hanging Out With Your Gay Best Friend After A Breakup Is A Tradition tradition of many theater children, and Arianators everywhere welcomed this sign that a new era was on the horizon.

However, there was another twist in the story to come, another classic tradition of children’s theater to honor: the spectacularity. Enter Ethan Slater, SpongeBob from Broadway and Wicked‘s Boq. Slater was reportedly married to his high school sweetheart, Lilly Jay, and the couple had recently welcomed his first child when he met Grande on the set of Wicked. The young family reportedly even hung out with Grande when Jay visited the set. “Ariana met her baby and even hugged him,” a source from the daily mail reclaimed. “They had dinner together in London, and Ariana told Lilly that she wanted to have a baby someday and that she couldn’t wait to start a family.”

However, instead of starting a family, this occasion seemed to mark the end of one. Shortly after Wimbledon, news broke that Grande and Slater were dating. Sources in the new couple’s camp claimed that they had both been separated from their respective spouses for some time before they hooked up, but the internet cast a lot of doubt on this version of events. After all, this is the woman with only one calling”break up with your girlfriend i’m bored.” Many assumed this was an on-set affair.

Lilly Jay didn’t confirm the cheating rumors, but she didn’t deny them either. She did call some tabloids to talk trash. “(Ariana) the story really. She is not a girlish girl. My family is just collateral damage. The story is her and Dalton,” she said. page six. TO TMZ, said she was “watching in horror as stories are published about my experience.” Slater’s ex stated: “I am focused on my son and doing everything I can to navigate a spotlight that I have never wanted or experienced before. … I am asking for privacy and respect as an individual who is not in the entertainment industry and as a mother. I ask that you leave me alone to rebuild my life and raise the beautiful child I gave birth to last year.”

Slater reportedly officially filed for divorce from Jay this week, although neither he nor Grande have made no official statement about their alleged relationship. While some may find tabloid fodder off-putting, it’s certainly the kind of juicy on-set drama that would do Hugh Grant proud. Now to resolve that strike so Wicked can finish and the rest of us can see what all the fuss is about.