As “Wicked: For Good” has surpassed its 2024 predecessor for the biggest opening weekend for a Broadway adaptation in box office history, Glinda the Good herself, Ariana Grande, penned a letter to the musical’s fans thanking them for welcoming Jon M. Chu’s take on the classic musical into their lives.
“I fell in love with ‘Wicked’ when I was 10 years old. It has been an escape and a place where I knew I could find comfort and understanding throughout my childhood and adult life. Loving something dearly and becoming it are two very different things,” she wrote.
She continued: “Becoming your Glinda the Good and being asked to join this most wonderful group of human beings on a most creatively and emotionally fulfilling journey was the greatest gift of my life.”
And of the film’s success, she wrote, “Now, to see how it has moved and been there for you all in the same way that it has for me over the course of my life has been the most meaningful, moving and cherished gift of all.”
Thank you notes have been a tradition for Grande over her career, penning them upon the completion of several albums in her pop star canon, at the end of her run on the Nickelodeon shows “Victorious” and “Sam & Cat,” and upon the release of last year’s “Wicked,” where she sent out particular thanks for her music fans who waited through a “drought” of new material while she stepped into Oz alongside co-star Cynthia Erivo and director Jon M. Chu.
Grande has earned critical acclaim for her performance as Glinda, receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress earlier this year for her work in the first “Wicked” and is heavily favored to receive a second nomination this January.
Read Grande’s letter in full below:
“Wicked,” meanwhile, grossed $758.7 million worldwide to become one of the top 5 grossing films of 2024; and “Wicked: For Good,” with a global opening of $226 million, is on pace to surpass that total.
In her letter, Grande asked fans to take the lessons of “Wicked” to heart, including to be “not afraid of acknowledging our own wickedness in order to grow away from it and toward goodness, because we all contain both.”
“Whenever things get scary or you feel alone, home is wherever and with whomever we want it to be, and there’s no place like home,” she wrote.
