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Bowen Yang defends Ariana Grande: “The narrative is wrong”

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Will Heath/NBC

The release of Ariana Grande‘s album eternal sunshine has led to even more speculation about her personal life, including her divorce from husband Dalton Gomez and her new relationship with her Wicked co-star Ethan Slater. But SNL star Bowen Yang, Ariana’s friend and Wicked co-star, says all those stories about Ariana being some kind of “home-wrecker” are falsehoods.

Speaking on his podcast Las Culturistas, Yang said, “The narrative is wrong. [Ariana’s] not even outwardly saying that, but the narrative has been incorrect and people have even retracted things in these stories with no f****** apology to the people who are involved.”

“I have understood in recent months that, like, a media narrative can be completely consuming and devastating and, like, frustrate you to no end because of how wrong it is,” he added.

“And having your name be put in sentences along with other names as a way of canceling anything you do out, of like invalidating what you do, pushing absolute falsehoods — I’m sorry, it is a really f****** disorienting thing to experience.”

Yang goes on to say how upsetting it must be to feel that people have “mistaken on a literal level, like, what has happened to [you], what [you] have done, what [you] have not done.”

“You can be completely vindictive about that or you can make the choice to just move forward and make something out of it if you want — cope with it, process it if you want,” he adds. “This girl knows how to process s*** with her work. … Just leave it alone.”

Bowen also thinks that Ariana “could’ve very easily made this a [Taylor Swift] Reputation album, an album that was like, ‘F*** you, I’ve been completely misunderstood.’ … Instead it’s this very fragile, delicate work.” 

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