Ariana Grande is reflecting on the ways in which she helped her parents mend their relationship after they divorced.
The Wicked star, 31, opened up about “forcing” her mom Joan Grande and dad Edward Butera to be friends again after they split on an episode of the WTF with Marc Maron podcast that aired on Monday, Feb. 10.
“They’re not together, but they’re best friends,” she said. “It took 18 years and it took me forcing it. I forced them to communicate again. I really did.”
Grande’s parents split when she was a child, and the singer explained that she’d finally taken a stand around her 24th birthday in 2017.
“I remember just kind of being at this pivotal point where I was just like, ‘You guys, I love you both so much. It’s been such a long time. Figure it the f— out,’” she recalled. “Like hello, it’s been 18 years. I’m 80 [years old]. Please get over it. And they did.”
The “Yes, And?” singer’s plea worked, and she says Joan, 67, and Ed, 66, are “best friends now.”
“I can’t separate them. It’s the best thing in the whole world,” she said. “I guess they just had like, some sort of beautiful conversation or realized that like, how much they love me is so much louder than whatever nonsense happened way back when. It really is beautiful, and if only they had the tools that I feel like we have now, this generation, with therapy and embracing that, maybe it could have happened sooner, but it was just the perfect thing…. It makes me really happy.”
Grande’s parents often show their support for their daughter; in 2020, she brought them both to the Grammy Awards and they posed together on the red carpet as a happy family. In November, Joan and Ed also stepped out together for the Los Angeles premiere of Wicked, in which Grande is credited as Ariana Grande-Butera.
“I just feel like this experience was such a homecoming for me,” she explained to a journalist of the naming decision. “That was my name when I went to see the show when I was 10 years old, and it felt like a really lovely way of honoring that. It felt really full circle.”
In a 2014 interview with Seventeen, Grande said she was estranged from her father, though the two have since mended fences.
On her 2019 hit “Thank U, Next,” she shouts out both mom and dad in lyrics fantasizing about her future wedding: “One day I’ll walk down the aisle/Holding hands with my mama/I’ll be thanking my dad/’Cause she grew from the drama.”
When she performed the song at the 2020 Grammys, she changed the lyrics to, “I’ll be thanking my dad/’Cause he’s really awesome” to reflect their renewed bond.
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