Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater have broken up after more than two years of dating, ending a relationship that began on the set of Wicked in 2022. The pair first met while working on the film and later started dating in the summer after they crossed paths on the production.
The split comes after months of fewer public appearances together and follows a stretch in which both kept praising each other in public. Grande posed with Slater at Wicked: For Good’s London premiere in November, and he later called her performance “out of this world” at the movie’s New York premiere, while also saying Cynthia Erivo’s was “unbelievable.”
The breakup is drawing attention now because the relationship had become one of the most closely watched off-screen stories tied to the Wicked films. E! News had reached out to Grande and Slater’s representatives for comment and had not heard back, leaving no public explanation for what ended the relationship.
From the beginning, the couple faced speculation that their relationship overlapped with Slater’s marriage to his ex-wife, Lily Jay, though both Grande and Slater maintained that their time together did not overlap with their previous relationships. Slater and Jay share one child and finalized their divorce in 2024, the same year Grande and Dalton Gomez also finalized their divorce. Grande said in September 2024 that “it definitely doesn’t get any easier” when tabloids drive negativity, and added that there could not be “a less accurate depiction” of Slater than what was being spread about him.
Slater later described the scrutiny as difficult in October 2024, saying private life being commented on publicly was really hard and that people who did not know what was happening were still weighing in. He also called the year “an amazing year and a really beautiful thing,” language that now sits awkwardly beside the end of the relationship. What caused the breakup has not been disclosed, and for now the clearest next step is silence: no statement has been confirmed from either side.
