Topics: Ariana Grande, Artificial intelligence, Celebrity, Entertainment, TV And Film, Wicked, Cynthia Erivo
Ariana Grande is sharing how she feels about the ‘graphic’ Wicked edits made by fans.
Just like the Broadway original, the movie musical - which has been a resounding success with critics and fans - centres on misunderstood schoolgirl Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and her relationship with popular witch Glinda (Grande), who form an unexpected friendship when bunking together in boarding school.
Glinda frequently defends her friend when she is judged over the colour of her green skin, and Elphaba sees the heart behind her pal's popularity.
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Since the movie's release last year, an overzealous subgroup of Wicked fanatics has emerged online, who have partaken in sharing memes and AI edits of the two main characters.
There has also been an outpouring of sexually-driven fan fiction and art dedicated to Elphaba and Glinda.
Grande, who is nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars 2025, recently spoke out about the more graphic dedications to the characters. After pointing out that some fans believe she and Erivo are ‘secretly married’ in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Grande spoke out about the more ‘graphic’ fan edits.
“I wish I could unsee some things,” she said. “I mean, wow, I had a feeling, but I didn’t know it would be on this scale or this graphic.”
This is not the first time Wicked fan edits have been called out. Another fan-edit had a speech bubble implying Glinda asking Elphaba if her genitals were green. Some fans also used AI to animated the poster to make it appear as through two actresses were fighting.
"This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen," Erivo wrote in a statement shared to Instagram regarding a fan-edited poster.
"Equal to that awful AI of us fighting, equal to people posing the question ‘is your ***** green.'"
"None of this is funny,” she wrote on social media as she shared the image. “None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us.
"The original poster is an ILLUSTRATION. I am a real life human being, who chose to look right down the barrel of the camera to you, the viewer… Because, without words we communicate with our eyes."
Touching on the airbrushing of her eyes - as well as Glinda's mouth and nose - she added: "Our poster is an homage not an imitation, to edit my face and hide my eyes is to erase me. And that is just deeply hurtful."
Grande spoke to Variety last year about the controversial fan edit, and fan-generated AI posters, stating AI is 'so conflicting and troublesome sometimes'.
"But I think it’s just kind of such a massive adjustment period," Grande continued. "This is something that is so much bigger than us, and the fans are gonna have fun and make their edits."
Asked directly whether she thinks accessibility to artificially-intelligent content has gone 'too far', she replied: "I think so.
"And I have so much respect for my sister, Cynthia, and I love her so much.
"It’s just a big adjustment period. It’s so much stimulation about something that’s so much bigger than us."
