Ariana Grande and Paul Mescal on WICKED, GLADIATOR II and “Glicked” for VARIETY Magazine

Pin

In a new conversation for VARIETY’s Actors on Actors issue, Ariana Grande and Paul Mescal discuss the “Glicked” phenomenon, the audition processes for “Wicked” and “Gladiator II,” Grande changing her voice to sound more operatic, their costumes, Mescal’s training, and more. 

Pin

Pin

Pin
 

Grande and Mescal on the “Glicked” phenomenon:

Grande: “I feel like our movies are strangely similar…I know that sounds absolutely absurd, but I really do feel like they are, because there are strong themes of evil versus good and dictatorship…They feel thematically intertwined.”

Mescal: “And also, not to sell the whole ‘Glicked’ thing, but in terms of a double feature—thematically similar, but then also totally different meals.”

Grande on the audition process for “Wicked”: “I mean, it was really insane. It was a three-and-a-half-month period of time…I was filming ‘The Voice,’ so I was going from my vocal coach to my acting coach to doing the live shows. I was so nervous about my voice being in good shape because my audition was the next day. And I was on set doing ‘The Voice,’ and I asked them to cut the air conditioning. They keep it really cold to keep the live audience awake. I had to sing opera the next day. I had to sing ‘No One Mourns the Wicked,’ and people started to notice. I was like, ‘It’s my fault.’…I was like, ‘I’m so sorry!’ That was my first audition, and then I had a callback where I had to do some scenes and more songs…[Cynthia Erivo and I] never chemistry read together. It was three rounds for me, and I read with two different actresses. I stayed for three and a half hours the final day, and I had cried so much. We did ‘Popular,’ ‘Defying Gravity,’ ‘For Good.’ And I left my lashes on the mirror, because I left everything else in the room.”

Mescal on how “Gladiator II” came into his life: “I met Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher. Doug was the producer on the first ‘Gladiator.’ I met them at Sunset Tower, and that was the first instance that I knew ‘Gladiator II’ was getting made. Then it went quiet for a little while. I was like, ‘They’ve gone to somebody else.’ Then I got a message from my agent being like, ‘Ridley Scott wants to Zoom.’ At that point, I was like, ‘This is fucking great!’ We spoke for half an hour. We spoke for 10 minutes about the film, 10 minutes about his dog and 10 minutes about the sport that I played growing up. In your head, you’re like, ‘Of course there’s going to be camera tests, auditions,’ but there just wasn’t any of those things.”

Grande on changing her voice for “Wicked”: “I was hunting Marc Platt down for an audition. As soon as I found out that it might be happening, I told my team, ‘Be on high alert, please. And I know this has to be earned. So when they start seeing people, can I please go in? I’ll do anything.’ And I worked really hard with a vocal coach and an acting coach to get ready, because Glinda’s vocal track is very different than what I usually sing…It’s very operatic and very classical sort of coloratura, which is different from doing a falsetto and whistle tones. It’s a totally different placement in the voice. I wanted to sound authentic in singing opera, and I started two months before my first audition.”

Mescal on training for “Gladiator II” and wearing his costume for the first time: “I initially decided when I’d first been cast—which was very naive—I was like, ‘I’m just going to go for normal “Gladiator.” The way my body is is the way my body is.’ And then I was like, ‘That’s not the film we’re making.’ So I went into the gym, but I hadn’t tried on the costumes yet, and when I put the costumes on, I was like, ‘This is miles away from anything I’ve ever done.’ I didn’t recognize the way my body was in the clothes that I was wearing, and that created a distance from who you feel like the world expects you to be as a performer. That got me excited. And then we had some dodgy wig fittings, and I’m not a fan of a wig.”

Grande on her costume for Glinda: “Paul Tazewell, our incredible costume designer, he is so immersed in this world. Every single detail, there’s a reason. And my bubble dress, he was consumed with the question of ‘How do I make it seem like it’s floating?’…I had my corset, and then they had snaps. There were 16 different layers that got snapped on. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it feels really lightweight and just kind of like a bubble itself. My favorite thing about that costume is just how light it is compared to what happens to her when she’s wearing it. It feels like the perfect representation of what Glinda’s magic is—which is her ability to take darkness and figure out how to make it light.”

Mescal on doing as much of his own stunts as possible: “Because the way Ridley shoots, he’s shooting eight cameras. So you’re not typically able to get a stunt double in. While he’s on your close-up, he’s also on your back, so you can’t really do a swap.”

Mescal on when he fell in love with acting: “When I did ‘Phantom of the Opera.’ I was 16. I was in transition year, which is like two years before finishing school. And I remember being wheeled out on this fake organ and fucking not having a clue how to play the organ. I have this theory: My parents met onstage doing ‘Pirates of Penzance’…So I have this weird thing that somewhere in my blood, or in my heart or head, that the act of being onstage feels like an important place.”

[Photo Credit: Alexi Lubomirski for Variety Magazine]

• Alexi Lubomirski
• Ariana Grande
• Editorials
• Magazines
• Paul Mescal
• Variety