Ariana Grande said that the time she spent making Universal’s “Wicked” movie — and away from touring and the music industry — has been “really healing.”
In an Apple Music interview with DJ Zane Lowe ahead of the release of her “Eternal Sunshine” album, Grande said that she now appreciates her success — but that in the past, it had made her “resentful.”
“I had a very interesting relationship to music before I left for ‘Wicked,’” she said. “I think that the time away was really healing.”
“I think I was hiding from my success or from what comes with it,” she told Lowe. “And it was really impacting my ability to be able to love what I did for a long time… it was really making me resentful, for a little bit of time.”
The pop star added, “I don’t feel that way anymore. And I feel like I’m able to let go of that and enjoy it, and I feel really proud and grateful for that. It feels very different.”
She continued, “I came back and I’ve loved every minute of making this album — the videos, rehearsing, putting the rollout together, doing the photoshoots — every single part of it, more than ever before in my life. I’ve been able to be so much more present and enjoy it and savor it at this time in a way that I don’t think I was able to before.”
Grande, whose first album was released in 2013 when she was 20, said that being in the music industry at such a young age was often overwhelming.
“I started making music when I was young, I didn’t really expect that or sign up for that. I just loved music. I didn’t know people were going to try to pit me against people I love,” she told Lowe. “I think I was very young and processing all of that. I kind of married that to music in my head for a while. I was like, ‘Oh well I can’t continue doing that.’”
Watch the entire interview in the video above.
Grande’s seventh studio album “Eternal Sunshine” is out on Friday.
“Wicked,” the film version of the hit Broadway musical that stars Ariana Grande as Glinda and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, is out on Nov. 27.