Erivo also said the friendship did not fade once the movies wrapped with 2025’s Wicked: For Good. According to her, she and Grande still text nearly every day.
“It’s very interesting, watching what people’s perception is versus what the reality actually is,” she said. “Lots of psychologists seated at home deciding who we were, what we were going through, what we were doing and why.”
Why the Singapore red carpet moment still matters
One moment that Erivo says reflected the reality of their friendship happened at the Singapore premiere of the Jon Chu-directed sequel. During the event, a man rushed onto the red carpet and approached Grande. Erivo said she stepped in because “nobody moved.”
“I moved because my brain went, ‘Get him away! Get him out of here!’” Erivo recalled, describing the incident as “terrifying.” “My immediate reaction was ‘Get him away from us.’ And what people couldn’t see is that he wouldn’t let go [of Grande]. He wouldn’t let go. So I just kept pushing at him to get him off.”
The moment drew criticism from some people who thought Erivo had overreacted. She does not see it that way. For her, the issue was not optics, but basic safety and personal boundaries.
“A stranger is a stranger,” she said. “Personal space is still personal space. It doesn’t belong to anyone, even if you feel you know the person.”
That point lands beyond celebrity red carpets. Public figures may be familiar to audiences, but familiarity is not permission.
Ariana Grande has described the bond as intentional
Grande has also spoken about the connection she built with Erivo while making and promoting Wicked. The two share matching tattoos, a detail that became one of the more visible symbols of their closeness.
In a 2025 interview with NPR, Grande said the relationship was something they both treated seriously from the start.
“It was important to us from the very beginning,” Grande said, “to build something real and to know that we could have a safe space in each other for this journey because it was going to be tremendous.”
That framing helps explain why the friendship became such a focus during the films’ rollout. Wicked is built around an intense central relationship, and audiences often look for echoes of that chemistry offscreen. Sometimes that is charming. Sometimes it becomes a full-time public investigation conducted from living rooms.
Erivo’s response is ultimately simple: what viewers saw was not a campaign strategy dressed up as intimacy. It was a real friendship, sustained after the cameras moved on, and tested in at least one moment where her instinct was to protect someone she cares about.
