On Friday, Ariana Grande blessed her fans with the music video for her latest single “Thank U, Next.” The video pays tribute to classic films like “Mean Girls,” “Bring It On” and “Legally Blonde.”
“Thank U, Next” already has 500,000 views in the first two hours of being uploaded to Youtube. That’s partly due to all that’s going on in those five minutes. To make things easy, TheWrap has broken down everything you may have missed while you blacked out from excitement.
Kris Jenner does her best Amy Poehler
Jenner makes an appearance during the “Mean Girls”-inspired Christmas show while Grande and co. dance on stage. Like Poehler in the movie, Jenner is having a little too much fun with that camcorder.
Singer Troyé Sivan gets bullied
Sivan, who starred in the new movie “Boy Erased,” plays one of the high school students gossiping about Grande in the beginning of the video. “I heard she’s a lesbian now and dating some chick called Aubrey. It’s fucking sick,” he confesses to the camera. Sivan is later shoved by Grande as she struts through the school hallway. Ugh, so fetch!
“Pete, I Love You Always” is written in her scrapbook.
When the music finally kicks in during the beginning of the video, you can see Grande scribbling in her scrapbook. Look closely and you can see a direct reference to ex-fiancé and SNL star Pete Davidson.
That’s not the only heart you can see on the page. A heart for a “Ricky,” for her ex and back-up dancer Ricky Alvarez, can also be seen in red marker too.
Ariana gets her packages shipped by “BDE”
Earlier this year, right around the news that Davidson and Grande were dating, Grande made a comment on Twitter about Davidson’s penis size. Twitter took this and ran with it, coming up with the term BDE (it stands for big, uh do we need to say it, energy) to describe a man with a cool vibe who also might be well endowed.
Toward the later half of the music video Grande is at a salon, recreating a scene in “Legally Blonde.” She confesses to the lady in front of her Paulette that her ex was “really big.” The person she’s talking to is actress Jennifer Coolidge, who is in not in one but two classic turn-of-the-century movies, “Legally Blonde” and “American Pie.”
Paulette either didn’t get the message or has a really weird way analogy for male genitalia, because she tells her she dated a guy once with a really big “front tooth.” Um, okay then.
But the bigger (no pun intended) nod to BDE comes when someone who is dressed like a UPS driver starts dancing in the salon toward the very end of the film. The man actually has a “BDE” on his shirt where the UPS would be. Very clever.
Many, many more merry cameos
Grande has friends in all the right places. Not only does Sivan and Jenner show up for “Thank U, Next,” but many of Grande’s former co-stars on Nickelodeon’s “Victorious” and actors from some of the movies she pays tribute to show up to the party.
The obvious ones are Coolidge of “Legally Blonde” and Aaron Samuels of “Mean Girls,” but you’ll also see former “Victorious” actresses Elizabeth Gillies and Daniella Monet, and actor Matt Bennett playing Grande’s boyfriend in a scene.