When news first broke that pop star Ariana Grande and her Wicked costar Ethan Slater were an item in July 2023, Slater’s estranged wife Lilly Jay described the relationship with a few choice words. Grande “isn’t a girl’s girl,” Jay told Page Six. “My family is just collateral damage.” The former couple has one son together. Now, more than a year of Wicked-mania later, Jay, a clinical psychologist, has published a lengthy essay for The Cut about what happened when her personal life became tabloid fodder.
Jay writes that Slater was her “high-school sweetheart,” and for years, she avoided social media. As Slater began to work as an actor, the divergence between their chosen careers grew stark. “It was a tenuous balance—my profession, which requires privacy, and his, which is measured in applause—but it worked well while life was unfolding according to our plans,” she writes. Ahead of filming for Wicked, Jay moved to London with Slater and their then two-month-old son. “Consumed by the magic and mundanity of new motherhood, I didn’t understand the growing distance between us.”
Jay wrote that she and Slater have worked out a co-parenting relationship, but the promotional cycle for Wicked wore on her. “While our partnership has changed, our parenthood has not. Both of us fiercely love our son 100 percent of the time, regardless of how our parenting time is divided,” she said. “As for me, days with my son are sunny. Days when I can’t escape the promotion of a movie associated with the saddest days of my life are darker.”
Wicked: Part One opened in theaters on November 22, earning $114 million in its opening weekend, but the promotional tour is ongoing. On Monday, Universal Pictures announced that the sequel would officially be titled Wicked: For Good, and is set to be released in November 2025. As for Slater and Grande, their relationship is still going strong. Earlier this week, Grande took to Instagram to respond with a heart emoji to a black-and-white photo Slater shared from a photo shoot with UK-based Schön Magazine. In another comment, she added that Slater is “the Buster Keaton of today!”
Representatives for Slater and Grande did not immediately respond to Vanity Fair.
