Ariana Grande tells Adam Sandler she "had to beg" for her 'Wicked' audition

Adam Sandler and Ariana Grande appeared on Variety and CNN's Actors on Actors segment on Friday, December 5. The pair discussed a number of topics, including their recent movies Wicked: For Good and Jay Kelly. Speaking of her Wicked movie series, Ariana revealed that she had to audition for the role.

Adam Sandler asked whether Ariana had to audition for the role of Glinda, to which she responded by saying,

"Yes, I begged for an audition. I didn't know if they would have even considered seeing me for it... I really begged... I had to beg them to let me audition, because they didn't want anyone that they knew to play these roles."

Ariana Grande shared more insights into how the auditions took place. She revealed that the first auditions were singing-related. According to her, she sang songs meant for both roles, Glinda and Elphaba.

"I sang No One Mourns the Wicked and Popular. And then I sang Defying Gravity and The Wizard and I," added the singer.

Ariana stated that she was called back for Glinda's role and believed that her all-pink outfit during the audition played a contributing factor in that decision. Sandler then shared that songs from the movie like Popular and Defying Gravity, were played at his home a lot.

"Your character is so heartbreaking," Ariana Grande said about Adam Sandler's character in Jay Kelly 

As previously mentioned, the pair spoke about a lot of topics, including Adam Sandler's 2025 movie Jay Kelly. For the unversed, Sandler played the role of Ron Sukenick, the manager of Kelly, played by George Clooney. During the conversation, Ariana expressed how much she loved Sandler's character in the comedy-drama movie.

"You're so incredible in Jay Kelly. Your character is so heartbreaking. I cried five times. Not choking up and holding back, but tears streaming out and fully breaking down," said the Side to Side singer.

Further during the conversation, Ariana Grande said that she felt Sandler's famous comedic roles also held "so much truth in them." At some point during the segment, Adam Sandler asked Ariana how she did the crying scenes in the film. To this, Ariana responded by saying that while she is a "crier" in life, doing it as a performance has been a lot more difficult. The singer further shared more about her role in the movie and said,

"I invented triggers for Glinda so that I didn't have to touch on my own, because certain themes in this film are so adjacent to my life. I had to design her pain so I didn’t need to reference my own."

The 42-minute-long interview has been uploaded on YouTube on Variety's YouTube channel. As of now, it has already garnered more than 240K views as well as over 12K likes since it was released on Friday. Many netizens took to the comment sections and praised both Ariana and Adam for admiring each other throughout the interview.

Some fans even expressed their wish to see the duo in a father-daughter role in a movie in the future.