Category: Entertainment

Ariana Grande is offering some clarifications for her fans after it was revealed on Sunday that she will be “taking a step back from visibility” after her Eternal Sunshine Tour wraps.

The singer-actress took a moment during her concert on Monday night at the United Center in Chicago to “clear the air about a few things.”

“Sometimes when a story comes out that’s not directly from me, things can get a little blown out of proportion, so I just wanted to speak to my fans directly tonight because I love you so much,” Grande began, via videos shared on social media. “The announcement that was made yesterday was not a reactive or impulsive thing. It was something that I have decided. A plan that I had quietly made a long time ago. It was a decision that was made from a thoughtful and empowered place. And I want you to know that many things can be true at the same time.”

“I heard that my fans were worried that negativity was ruining things for me, but I just have to say that could not be more the far opposite. This is not what that is. And I just want to be very, very clear, multiple things can be true at the same time: boundaries need to be set, human beings can need a break sometimes and also, this can be and will continue to be the greatest experience of my professional and creative life,” she continued, drawing loud cheers from the audience. “No matter what noises exist out there, nothing will ever be able to distort my reality or be real to me or louder to me than this love that we share, or even how it feels to make art with the people that I love and respect.”

“This is what I will always take with me and carry with me, because the rest of that shit is not mine to carry so I don’t carry it. And I wanted you to hear that from me. I needed to get out here and differentiate that from my truth for all of you because I love you and this tour has been the most healing, beautiful, corrective, magnificent, special experience of my life,” Grande concluded.

The Wicked star’s new comments came a day after her rep told The Hollywood Reporter that she will be stepping back from the public eye after her tour concludes on Sept. 1, following her 10-show residency in London.

“She looks forward to finishing the tour and ending it on a high note, both healthily and happily, and then taking a much-deserved break from public-facing work and appearances, which has led to endless, ongoing public scrutiny,” the rep added. “This tour has been a beautiful experience for her. She loves her fans and has loved every minute of this tour so much.”

THR also learned that Grande dropped out of the West End revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George, which is set to open next summer.

The “petal” singer has had a busy few years, between starring in Wicked: For Good and Wicked, the latter of which earned her an Oscar nomination for her role as Glinda. She’s also released two albums over the last two years, including 2024’s Eternal Sunshine and Petal, which dropped last month. Grande next stars in Focker-in-Law, hitting theaters on Nov. 25.

St. Vincent wrapped up her critically lauded orchestral tour run in her “adopted hometown” of Los Angeles at the Hollywood Bowl Sunday night, enlisting the venue’s famed orchestra to help turn her discography into a full-on theatrical experience.

The concert marked the culmination of a concept years in the making, starting with when the singer-songwriter — real name Anne Clark — was first invited last year for BBC Proms, where she collaborated with conductor Jules Buckley for a concert at Royal Albert Hall. That resulted in St. Vincent’s latest album, Live in London!, which dropped in March, and a now-completed two-month trek that had her and Buckley playing with local symphony orchestras all over the country from Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston, New York and Detroit, among many more.

Still, the Hollywood Bowl is the only locale appropriate to wrap up something as cinematic as this, and Clark delivered, bringing an hour-and-a-half set that flew by as she added yet another layer to her already genre-bending mix of art-rock and pop.

The orchestral accompaniment lends itself well to St. Vincent’s music, adding a certain dramatic flair to an already very visual discography. The strings help bring out the Bond Theme quality of “Violent Times.” “Smoking Section” gets a bit more grandiose and takes on an almost Spaghetti Western vibe, while “Los Ageless” gets scaled back, going much more intimate from its hardened industrial rock, with swelling strings and piano emphasizing the longing in the song’s chorus: “how could anybody have you and lose you and not lose their minds, too?”

And while an orchestra of dozens of players can make it harder for any one instrument to stand out, it only further emphasized Clark’s inventive guitar work, adding a Zeppelin-esque light and shade quality where her heavily distorted six-string could suddenly cut through the daintier score, only to disappear again as she went back to a verse.

She emphasized the drama with her own physical performance too. During show opener “We Put a Pearl in the Ground,” she held her arm out, fingers crossed for much of the track. On “Marrow,” she hits the body of her guitar like she’s thumping her chest as she spells “H-E-L-P.” And during “The Bed,” she kept her fingers on the vein on her left arm by the pit of her elbow, as if to check her pulse.

For an Orchestra-backed show, Clark was never above getting loose. Toward the end of the set during “New York,” Clark had taken to the edge of the stage, walking just above the concert-goers in the pool circle section, grabbing someone’s popcorn and pouring it all over herself. She reached for another before pulling back. “The popcorn bit only works once,” she said, soon after grabbing someone’s glass of wine and splashing that all over her chest and waist as well.

As she’s done throughout much of the tour, she wrapped up her set with the fitting, string-laden Masseduction standout “Slow Disco.”

Setlist:
“We Put a Pearl in the Ground”
“Hell Is Near”
“Reckless”
“Violent Times”
“Black Rainbow”
“Marrow”
“The Bed”
“Smoking Section”
“Now, Now”
“Live in the Dream”
“The Nowhere Inn”
“Digital Witness”
“Los Ageless”
“New York”
“Paris Is Burning”

Encore:
“Slow Disco”

It appears the New Girl cast and creator aren’t exactly on the same page about the rumored reunion.

After Max Greenfield, who played Schmidt on the hit sitcom, fueled speculation that the gang might be getting back together, creator Liz Meriwether playfully took to Instagram to offer her thoughts on the matter.

“As far as I know, it’s happening,” Greenfield recently said on Today with Jenna & Sheinelle about a potential New Girl reunion. He added that he’s “seen scripts” Meriwether’s written and that they’re “amazing.”

However, according to Meriwether, Greenfield actually wasn’t a big fan of her alleged scripts. “Max told everybody that there’s amazing scripts of a New Girl reunion that I’ve written. Um — and just an update on that — the scripts were pretty good until everybody just started giving me notes on every little thing,” she joked.

The creator then went on to list all of the script changes that she claimed each actor requested. “Jake wants Nick to be, like, really thin — and wants to kind of be naked a lot, showing off his body,” Meriwether quipped of Jake Johnson, who played Nick on the show. “He asked to have a dance number with him, fully nude, dancing to ‘Levitating,’ by Dua Lipa.”

Meriwether said that “it didn’t really make any sense in the story,” so she had to figure out a way to shut down Johnson’s idea. She joked that he got “really upset” in response.

As for Lamorne Morris, who played Winston Bishop, the creator quipped, “Lamorne keeps asking for more and more jewelry. For his character, he wants a very long chain, like a chain all the way down to his knees.”

Lastly, she said Greenfield “has been very adamantly asking to be the new girl. Like, he wants the title to be, ‘Max Greenfield is the New Girl.’”

“Again, I thought that would throw audiences and, you know, nobody really wanted that,” Meriwether jokingly added. “I wasn’t going to say any of this publicly, but then Max decided to make it all public, so again, I have to comment.”

While there’s been no official confirmation of a New Girl reunion, aside from Greenfield trolling fans, it’s safe to say no one will be returning to apartment 4D until they all get on the same page about these rumored scripts that everyone keeps talking about.

Johnson also joked on his Instagram Story Monday that he thinks Greenfield was confused when he called the reunion scripts amazing. “I think I figured out what happened with this Max Greenfield and the script thing for New Girl. I just saw Liz Meriwether’s new show, Furious. I think Max read those scripts,” he said. “I totally get it. It happened to me too many times. I love you, Max, but that’s a different show, my brother.”

New Girl, which also starred Zooey Deschanel, Hannah Simone and Damon Wayans Jr., ran for seven seasons from 2011 to 2018.