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By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
At the moment, Ariana Grande is having a moment: she had already found great success as a singer and actor before starring in Wickeda successful film that put all his skills as a performer to the test. Wicked proved to be a smash hit that sent Grande’s career soaring as high as the Wicked Witch, but a new scandal threatens to bring her back down to Earth. Her team is allegedly copyrighting old videos where Grande apparently uses a fake black accent, and the negative attention she’s now getting proves one thing: the internet never forget
Ariana Grande’s Accent Scandal
The heart of this Wicked scandal is the accusation that Ariana Grande used a fake (or boring) black accent in previous media appearances as a way to give herself and her career a makeover. One fan (@goodgirlfaith) posted a video on X with several examples of the singer’s alleged boredom on December 28, where it racked up an impressive 26 million views. It might have gotten even bigger, but the video was pulled by a copyright strike (according to the user who posted the video) by Grande’s own legal team.
Part of what makes this Wicked such a spicy scandal is the alleged reason behind the copyright strike. According to user X who posted it, the reason for the video being removed is that it “contains pirates/leaked,” but pointed out that the footage was taken from “officially released interviews ” and thus “has come under fair use.” The same video was posted to TikTok and subsequently deleted, leading to speculation that Grande’s legal team was doing everything they could to avoid the negative repercussions the singer’s alleged exuberance could cause to her career and ‘to latest film.
Obviously, it’s impossible to know the exact motives of Ariana Grande’s legal team. It’s very possible that they thought the original video somehow contained pirated content. And if there really is was some big conspiracy to hide all the evidence of the singer’s alleged boredom, that same legal team would have prevented the video from being reposted or tried to hit other videos dealing with a similar topic. However, that video has been successfully reposted as a YouTube in short, which means that anyone can watch the footage of the modern Grande interviewing her past self who has noticeably darker skin and a very different accent.
About the creators of the Wicked movie, this scandal hit at the worst possible time, and the efforts to remove the original video have only made more people curious about how Grande has changed over time. Notably, controversy about her accent and appearance goes back many years to when she was working with Black artists such as Victoria Monét on more R&B influenced music. During this time, Grande rocked a deep tan and a different accent, prompting speculation that she wanted fans to think of her as Black (she’s actually Caucasian), and this old scandal is now set to threaten her career ambitions in the future.
There is a lesson here for all of us: the fact that Wicked fans and haters came together to create this scandal at the height of Ariana Grande’s fame is proof that the internet never forgets anything. Yesterday’s controversies are not forgotten or forgiven…instead they are edited into clever videos that will be released whenever a celebrity needs to be taken down a peg. And if this video gets more attention thanks to the alleged intervention of her legal team, Grande may have to take notes from her Bad character and end up relearning how to be popular once again.
Source: PopCrush
