Ariana Grande said Mac Miller helped her find herself, including brown hair.
The 32-year-old “Wicked” star appeared on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter Podcast, which aired this week at Chapman University in December, and spoke about the late rapper’s influence on his career.
She made rare comments about her ex-boyfriend, revealing for the first time that Miller encouraged her to regain her natural brunette color and R&B sound as she moved on from her Nickelodeon days.
“We’ve never talked about this, but Malcolm (you may know him as Mac) actually encouraged me to be who I am,” Grande said. He said, “I shed that persona, embraced my brown hair, made R&B-influenced pop music, and reassured her that it was okay to break up and do something brave.”
Grande and Miller first collaborated on her 2013 breakout single, “The Way,” from her debut album, Yours Truly, released in August 2013. Their romance only became public in September 2016, three years after their musical partnership began, but she felt Miller’s influence from the beginning.
“That’s part of the reason I wanted him to be a part of it,” the Grammy winner explained. “I felt like I wanted to thank him for helping me find my sound, not just because he was perfect for that song.”
The pair dated until May 2018, but split amicably until Miller died of an accidental overdose at age 26 in September 2018.
Grande began dying her hair red in 2009 for her role as Cat Valentine on Nickelodeon’s Victorious, and kept it that color until her 2014 spinoff Sam & Cat was cancelled. In her later years, she divided her time between photographing during the week and playing music on the weekends.
“I definitely think there was a time when it was difficult to do[acting and music]at the same time,” Grande recalls. She styled her hair brown on Friday night after filming, then gave it a nice rinse late Sunday to bring back the redness in preparation for her 6 a.m. call Monday morning.
“That totally ruined my hair,” Grande wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post in 2014, explaining why she always wore her signature ponytail.
The singer has since embraced her natural brunette hue, debuting a rich, warm dye job in October after spending three years blonde for her role in “Wicked.” She said on the Zach Sun show in 2020 that her red hair represents Cat Valentine, a character she loves but is “not me.”
