Ariana Grande Said Her Role in ‘Wicked’ Helped Her Deal With ‘Traumas’ Related to Making Music and Touring
Following her upcoming schedule of performances, Ariana Grande said she hopes to step away from touring for a while. The actor and singer last toured in 2019 for her Sweetener album. She admitted that she felt slightly traumatized by her experiences with music and touring, but she looks forward to her Eternal Sunshine tour. She said her role as Glinda in Wicked helped her rebuild her relationship with music and touring.
Ariana Grande shared how ‘Wicked’ helped her heal her relationship with touring
In June 2026, Grande will embark on her Eternal Sunshine tour. It’s her first tour in years, and she said she is looking forward to it.
“I feel really grateful and excited about it in a way that feels so different to me,” she told Nicole Kidman in a conversation for Interview Magazine, later adding, “I’ve just been healing my relationship to music and touring over the past couple of years.”
She said that the making of Eternal Sunshine helped her explore and heal her relationship to fame.
“I spent a lot of time redoing my system when it comes to making music,” she explained. “With Eternal Sunshine, that felt like a very different experience for me. I think the time away from it helped me reclaim certain pieces of it and put certain feelings that maybe belonged to my relationship to fame, or the things that come with being an artist, in a box somewhere else, and say, ‘Okay. I don’t have to let go of this thing that I love. I can just put those things over here, and not lose sight of my gifts.’”
Grande said her role as Glinda in Wicked and Wicked: For Good also helped her rebuild her love of music. She said the sudden explosion of her career had been jarring.
“So I’ve just been taking baby steps towards healing my relationship to music and touring, and I think my time with Glinda and with acting really helped me build the strength to be able to do that,” she said. “But I can’t express how grateful I am. I think it just held some traumas for me before, and I feel those dissipating, and that is such an extraordinarily beautiful thing.”
Ariana Grande plans to step away from touring after 2026
Though Grande is looking forward to her upcoming tour, she has no current plans for future tours. After she plays her final show, she will step away from touring for a while.
“I’m very excited to do this small tour,” she said on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast. “But I think it might not happen again for a long, long, long, long time. I’m going to give it my all and it’s going to be beautiful. And I’m so grateful. I think that’s why I’m doing it because I’m like: ‘One last hurrah’ — for now.”
She will play her final show of the tour in London on Sept. 1.
She hopes to focus on Broadway roles
As she prepares to step away from her pop career, at least for the time being, Grande hopes to take more Broadway roles. She had a minor role in a Broadway show as a child.
“I would [do Broadway],” she said, adding, “I love theater so much, and I actually did a Broadway show when I was 13 years old. I was a chorus girl.”
Even though she only had a few lines, Grande said she learned a great deal from the experience. She hopes to do it again soon.
“I feel like that’s where I developed stamina,” she said. “But I would love to be onstage again.”
