Ariana Grande and Paul Mescal Go Full ‘Glicked’ as They Dish on Singing, Fight Scenes and That ‘Insufferable’ Press Tour
Ariana Grande travels with a furry companion; no, not Toto, but close. The Grammy-winning pop singer — and, thanks to her film “Wicked,” newly minted movie star — shows up at our shoot hours early, ready to make friends as she meanders around the coffee station with her beagle-Chihuahua mix, Toulouse, in her arms. As time passes, Grande begins to seem like just another member of the crew, chatting eagerly with anyone she sees. Eventually, she decides to take Toulouse to the patio. “We’re just looking for some sunshine,” she trills.
It’s almost a surprise that she can’t generate her own. This year, Grande fulfilled a lifelong dream by taking on the role of Galinda — the perma-cheerful mean girl who turns out to have a heart of gold, and is destined to become Glinda the Good Witch. Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the smash Broadway musical about goings-on in the land of Oz has launched Grande, with her co-star Cynthia Erivo (playing Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West), into the heart of Oscar season.
More from Variety
To get there, though, Grande first had to battle a gladiator. “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” came out on the same day, in a showdown that recalled “Barbenheimer.” This time, too, the irresistible pink film beat out the R-rated drama, but both movies also boosted each other, and helped rescue the winter box office. The success of “Gladiator II” owes a great deal to the easygoing charm of Paul Mescal. Playing Roman warrior Lucius, the Irish actor levels up from recent indie darlings “All of Us Strangers” and “Aftersun.”
Mescal is as casual and unaffected as Grande as he strolls around our studio, at one point popping into close friend Saoirse Ronan’s photo shoot just to say hi. And both stars take their films’ rivalry as an opportunity for some theater-kid fun. Echoing the term fans coined for their unlikely double feature, both Mescal and Grande, during their conversation, exclaim, “We are ‘Glicked!’”
ARIANA GRANDE: I watched “Gladiator” last night. It’s unbelievable. And you’re spectacular.
PAUL MESCAL: Thank you very, very much. I saw “Wicked” about three weeks ago in New York. Best place to see it. It goes without saying — I just think you’re extraordinarily brilliant in the film. What can’t you do?
GRANDE: Oh gosh, no. I mean, coming from you — I’ve seen you sing on YouTube.
MESCAL: We’re starting there?
GRANDE: I have to start there, because I’m a musical theater nerd, and I saw you sing in “Les Miz.”
MESCAL: Yeah. With the dodgy mutton chops.
GRANDE: No, I’m very excited because I also know that you’re doing “Merrily We Roll Along,” and that’s really cool.
MESCAL: I definitely share the musical theater bug. Where did your love for musical theater begin?
GRANDE: I don’t know. I mean, it was just something that spoke to me. I was a child, and I would sit there watching “The Wizard of Oz” and study Judy Garland, and I just remember it being such an escape. I loved the storytelling and seeing my first Broadway show.
MESCAL: What was that?
GRANDE: It was “Beauty and the Beast.” I just remember loving it so much. When did you fall in love with acting?
MESCAL: When I did “Phantom of the Opera.” I was 16. I was in transition year, which is like two years before finishing school. And I remember being wheeled out on this fake organ and fucking not having a clue how to play the organ. I have this theory: My parents met onstage doing “Pirates of Penzance.”
GRANDE: Oh, my goodness.
MESCAL: So I have this weird thing that somewhere in my blood, or in my heart or head, that the act of being onstage feels like an important place.
GRANDE: That’s so sweet. Parents met doing “Pirates of Penzance”?
MESCAL: Yeah. Dad was the pirate king, and my mum was one of the maids.
GRANDE: That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard.
MESCAL: Thank God for that production, because I wouldn’t be here.
GRANDE: I feel like our movies are strangely similar.
MESCAL: Do you?
GRANDE: I know that sounds absolutely absurd, but I really do feel like they are, because there are strong themes of evil versus good and dictatorship.
MESCAL: Yeah, absolutely.
GRANDE: They feel thematically intertwined.
MESCAL: And also, not to sell the whole “Glicked” thing, but in terms of a double feature —thematically similar, but then also totally different meals.
GRANDE: We’re really selling each other’s films quite well.
MESCAL: Yeah, exactly. I think so. What was your start point with “Wicked”?
GRANDE: I was hunting Marc Platt down for an audition. As soon as I found out that it might be happening, I told my team, “Be on high alert, please. And I know this has to be earned. So when they start seeing people, can I please go in? I’ll do anything.” And I worked really hard with a vocal coach and an acting coach to get ready, because Glinda’s vocal track is very different than what I usually sing.
MESCAL: What’s the differences?
GRANDE: It’s very operatic and very classical sort of coloratura, which is different from doing a falsetto and whistle tones. It’s a totally different placement in the voice. I wanted to sound authentic in singing opera, and I started two months before my first audition.
But how did “Gladiator” come into your life? Obviously, they just called you and begged you to do it?
MESCAL: I wish that was the case. I met Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher. Doug was the producer on the first “Gladiator.” I met them at Sunset Tower, and that was the first instance that I knew “Gladiator II” was getting made. Then it went quiet for a little while. I was like, “They’ve gone to somebody else.”
Then I got a message from my agent being like, “Ridley Scott wants to Zoom.” At that point, I was like, “This is fucking great!” We spoke for half an hour. We spoke for 10 minutes about the film, 10 minutes about his dog and 10 minutes about the sport that I played growing up. In your head, you’re like, “Of course there’s going to be camera tests, auditions,” but there just wasn’t any of those things.
GRANDE: Was that the real sword from the original movie?
MESCAL: Yeah.
GRANDE: I wanted to know so badly. I feel like that must be a very commonly asked question, but I had to ask.
MESCAL: Oh, I’m as much of a fan of “Gladiator” lore as anybody else. It was a weird position to be in when you’re a fan but also having to shoulder some big responsibility about what the next iteration of it is.
GRANDE: That pressure is a very specific thing.
MESCAL: But I feel like the pressure is related to both films. I want to go back briefly to the audition process. What was that like?
GRANDE: I mean, it was really insane. It was a three-and-a-half-month period of time.
MESCAL: Where did you find the time to do that?
GRANDE: I was filming “The Voice,” so I was going from my vocal coach to my acting coach to doing the live shows. I was so nervous about my voice being in good shape because my audition was the next day. And I was on set doing “The Voice,” and I asked them to cut the air conditioning. They keep it really cold to keep the live audience awake. I had to sing opera the next day. I had to sing “No One Mourns the Wicked,” and people started to notice. I was like, “It’s my fault.”
MESCAL: The AC’s broken!
GRANDE: I was like, “I’m so sorry!” That was my first audition, and then I had a callback where I had to do some scenes and more songs.
MESCAL: Was this with Cynthia Erivo?
GRANDE: Not yet. We never chemistry read together. It was three rounds for me, and I read with two different actresses. I stayed for three and a half hours the final day, and I had cried so much. We did “Popular,” “Defying Gravity,” “For Good.” And I left my lashes on the mirror, because I left everything else in the room.
MESCAL: How long did it take for you to find out?
GRANDE: Oh gosh. It was another three, four weeks of waiting after that, and it felt like seven years.
MESCAL: Whoa. That’s rough.
GRANDE: It felt really long. I just kind of trusted that I had done the work. And I love “Wicked,” and I just wanted it to be beautiful, even if it wasn’t mine.
MESCAL: It’s a really hard thing to step into something that people adore, but also to be yourself and Cynthia at the absolute center of it.
GRANDE: Cynthia is just an absolute brilliant gift of a human being. I think we tried to keep the pressure out of the room, obviously, as much as possible.
MESCAL: I’m watching you guys in the press tour. You’re obviously in love with each other.
GRANDE: Insufferable. Yes. We’re horrible. It’s bad. How old were you when you first saw “Gladiator”?
MESCAL: Well, the film came out when I was 4. So my parents didn’t let me see it. And then I watched it with my dad when I was 13 and just loved it.
GRANDE: In “Gladiator” and “Wicked,” we both have these massive sets, these massive fight scenes or dance numbers. I don’t mean fight scenes in “Wicked.” Maybe next one.
MESCAL: Oh, really?
GRANDE: Maybe, we’ll see. I have so many questions about the stunt coordinating and the rehearsing of the choreography. You did everything yourself?
MESCAL: As much as I could. Because the way Ridley shoots, he’s shooting eight cameras. So you’re not typically able to get a stunt double in. While he’s on your close-up, he’s also on your back, so you can’t really do a swap. How long did you guys work together before you actually got in front of the camera?
GRANDE: We had a pretty long rehearsal process. We had rehearsal tracks that we recorded in the studio.
MESCAL: I’ve heard about this. You and Cynthia went into the studio yourself?
GRANDE: Yeah. It was fun to get there and lay down the songs. We did sing everything live on set. But I remember the first day I got there, I really wanted to wear Glinda’s shoes right away, just because it helps find the body and the physicality.
MESCAL: Totally.
GRANDE: We rehearsed for three and a half months before we got anything on camera.
MESCAL: Wow.
GRANDE: There were many different versions of “Dancing Through Life.”
MESCAL: That’s an amazing sequence. Take me through this, please.
GRANDE: Very scary. Very big thing. It’s a big wheel of death, and it’s kind of really insane. I don’t know. It felt very scary to watch. I’m nervous in general, so just standing there, watching, I was in awe.
MESCAL: That’s interesting, because your performance doesn’t feel like it has any of that whatsoever.
GRANDE: The nerves? Do you get nervous?
MESCAL: Yeah, absolutely.
GRANDE: How did you feel the first time you wore your costume, and did you get any training in it? How much do you think it helps you?
MESCAL: I initially decided when I’d first been cast — which was very naive — I was like, “I’m just going to go for normal ‘Gladiator.’ The way my body is is the way my body is.” And then I was like, “That’s not the film we’re making.” So I went into the gym, but I hadn’t tried on the costumes yet, and when I put the costumes on, I was like, “This is miles away from anything I’ve ever done.”
I didn’t recognize the way my body was in the clothes that I was wearing, and that created a distance from who you feel like the world expects you to be as a performer. That got me excited. And then we had some dodgy wig fittings, and I’m not a fan of a wig.
GRANDE: I need to see them. What were they like?
MESCAL: They were big. I just don’t have a head for wigs. But seeing myself in the costume, it was one of the moments where I was like, “I’m doing ‘Gladiator II,’ and I’m this thing.” And then, of course, putting on Maximus’ breastplate is pretty insane.
GRANDE: I screamed. I squealed.
MESCAL: You squealed?
GRANDE: Yeah, I was with my best friend, Doug, and we were watching together. We both squealed.
MESCAL: Internally, I was squealing.
GRANDE: A very iconic moment.
MESCAL: What about you?
GRANDE: Paul Tazewell, our incredible costume designer, he is so immersed in this world. Every single detail, there’s a reason. And my bubble dress, he was consumed with the question of “How do I make it seem like it’s floating?”
MESCAL: How does that work?
GRANDE: I had my corset, and then they had snaps. There were 16 different layers that got snapped on. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it feels really lightweight and just kind of like a bubble itself. My favorite thing about that costume is just how light it is compared to what happens to her when she’s wearing it. It feels like the perfect representation of what Glinda’s magic is — which is her ability to take darkness and figure out how to make it light.
MESCAL: It’s a beautifully designed film. How do you find running around the world with the film?
GRANDE: Oh, I think it’s fun. I mean we’ve had the same press tour.
MESCAL: Because we are “Glicked.”
GRANDE: We are “Glicked.” Have any of the responses in the theater at the screenings really surprised you?
MESCAL: I’ve only seen it once with a big audience.
GRANDE: Cynthia and I have seen it 108,000 times at this point.
MESCAL: I saw it in London, sitting beside Ridley at the premiere. Any bits that he’d like, he’d be, like, just elbowing me. I was like, “This is the coolest.”
GRANDE: That has to be the best thing ever.
Production: Emily Ullrich; Lighting Director: Max Bernetz; Set Direction: Gille Mills
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
