# The Dark Rise of Ariana Grande

The donut shop security footage was grainy, but the girl in the ponytail was unmistakable.

July 4, 2015. Wolfee Donuts in Lake Elenore, California. Ariana Grande, then twenty-two years old, stood at the counter with her boyfriend, backup dancer Ricky Alvarez. She licked a donut she hadn’t purchased. Then another. Then she shouted at the employee bringing out fresh pastries.

“What the fuck is that?”

Then the words that would follow her for years: “I hate Americans. I hate America.”

She jumped up and down, cackling like someone who had forgotten that cameras existed everywhere.

Within days, she was uninvited from performing at the White House. The MLB All-Star Game replaced her with Demi Lovato. The owner of Wolfee Donuts watched his health rating drop from A to B as health inspectors descended on his mom-and-pop shop.

“I was so disgusted with myself,” Ariana said in her apology video, filmed with her jaw still swollen from wisdom tooth surgery. “I shoved my face in a pillow and wanted to disappear.”

The internet wasn’t buying it. “Fake apology not accepted,” one comment read. Another: “Return that money to the people who like jelly donuts who also bought your stupid music.”

It was the second major scandal of her young career. The first had come a year earlier, when an “industry insider” told the New York Daily News that after a meet-and-greet, Ariana stepped into an elevator and said, “I hope they all fucking die.”

She denied it. But the damage was done. The girl from Boca Raton, Florida — the one who started on Broadway at thirteen, who played Cat Valentine on Victorious and Sam & Cat, who was supposed to be Nickelodeon’s next sweetheart — was developing a reputation.

Diva. Difficult. Someone who requested to be photographed only from her left side. Someone who allegedly elbowed actress Juliana Rancic backstage at the AMAs.

And then there was the jealousy on the Sam & Cat set.

 

Jennette McCurdy, Ariana’s co-star, would later write in her memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died about the resentment that festered during the show’s single season.

“We started the show, and then her explosion to Ariana Grande fame happened during our first twenty episodes,” Jennette wrote. “She would have to miss work because she was being pulled in all directions. Radio shows. Billboard Awards. Grammys.”

One week, the writers decided Ariana’s character would be trapped in a box so she could go perform at the Grammys. Jennette acted with a box.

“I booked two features during that time that I had to turn down because the team wouldn’t write me out of episodes,” Jennette wrote. “Then this week happened — the week where I was told Ariana would not be here at all. They would write around her absence by having her character be locked in a box.”

Jennette turned down movies while Ariana went “whistle-toning at the Billboard Music Awards.”

The final straw came when Ariana came to set gushing about playing charades at Tom Hanks’s house.

“That was the moment I broke,” Jennette wrote. “Music performances and magazine covers, whatever. I’ll get over it. But playing a family game at National Treasure Tom Hanks’s house? I’m done.”

From that moment on, she didn’t like Ariana. She couldn’t.

 

But the donut scandal and the diva reputation weren’t the darkest parts of Ariana’s story. They weren’t even close.

The darkest part came two years later, in a city she had grown to love.

 

May 22, 2017. Manchester Arena. The final night of the European leg of the Dangerous Woman Tour.

Ariana had just finished her last song. The crowd of twenty thousand — mostly young girls and teenagers, many accompanied by their parents — was cheering, grabbing jackets, checking phones, heading for the exits.

Then the bomb went off.

The explosion ripped through the foyer of the arena. Twenty-two people died. More than one hundred were injured. The youngest victim was eight years old.

Ariana was backstage when it happened. She was rushed to a waiting car, driven to the airport, flown home to Florida. She sat in her mother’s house and stared at the wall.

“I was like, I can’t,” she said later. “I’m not putting those costumes on again. I can’t sing those songs again. I love y’all, but I can’t do it.”

She thought she would never perform again.

Her fans thought so too.

But less than two weeks later, she returned to Manchester. She organized the One Love Manchester benefit concert. She stood on a stage in front of fifty thousand people and sang. She performed with Coldplay, with Liam Gallagher, with Robbie Williams. She brought the city to its feet.

“I think a mixture of just the love from my fans and seeing people be there for one another and help each other heal — and therapy,” she said. “Therapy.”

She later called the concert the most important thing she would ever do in her entire career.

But the trauma didn’t disappear. It burrowed into her bones.

 

Before Manchester, there had been another darkness.

Ariana had always been fascinated by the supernatural — witches, magic, the occult. She used to be Catholic. But in 2013, she had what she called a “demonic experience” in Kansas City.

“We went to this haunted castle,” she said. “The next night we wanted to go to Stull Cemetery, which is known as one of the seven gates to hell on earth.”

In the car, she felt “a sick, overwhelming feeling of negativity.” She smelled sulfur — “the sign of a demon.” A fly appeared in the car — “another sign of a demon.”

She rolled down the window and apologized: “We didn’t mean to disrupt your peace.”

Then she took a picture.

“There are three super distinct faces in the picture,” she claimed. “Textbook demons.”

That same year, she renounced Christianity and Catholicism. She began studying Kabbalah — the same mystical tradition associated with Madonna. She started incorporating witchcraft imagery into her performances and fashion.

“I feel like a little fairy witch sometimes,” she tweeted.

By 2024, on the Zach Sang Show, she was calling herself “the witchiest witch.”

“Between being a literal witch — I’m not kidding — and being the most realistic, cut-and-dry person,” she said. “You are a witch,” Sang told her. “I am indeed the witchiest witch,” she replied.

 

But the most devastating darkness — the one that would haunt her for years — involved the man she loved.

Mac Miller.

Ariana and Mac had known each other since 2012, when they recorded a cover of “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” There was always something between them — a pull, a chemistry — but the timing was never right. She was with Jai Brooks. He was with his high school sweetheart, Nomi Leasure.

In March 2013, they filmed the music video for “The Way.” They kissed at the end. The internet went wild.

Mac tried to downplay it. “She’s the homie,” he said. “She’s got a boyfriend.”

But by April 2013, Mac and Nomi had broken up. By August, Ariana had broken up with Jai. By September, she was dating Nathan Sykes from The Wanted — a rebound that lasted four months.

The on-again, off-again dance continued for years.

In 2016, Ariana was still dating Ricky Alvarez — the donut-licking backup dancer. But on July 15, she was spotted at Disneyland with Mac Miller. The next day, she posted a Snapchat of herself dancing to an unreleased Mac song. The day after that, news broke that she and Ricky had broken up.

The timeline was messy. Nomi, Mac’s ex, called their relationship “a perfectly planned PR partnership” and “simple-syrup love.” She claimed Mac’s management team had tried to silence her with legal threats.

Ariana and Mac became inseparable. She posted a photo of them with the caption “baby.” He appeared on her remix of “Into You” with the line: “Heard you got a man, baby, I could do it better.”

In May 2018, they broke up. Ariana cited his struggles with substance use. “I’m not a babysitter or a mother,” she said. “No woman should feel that they need to be.”

Four months later, on September 7, 2018, Mac Miller died of an accidental overdose. He was twenty-six years old.

 

The grief nearly destroyed her.

She had already moved on — quickly, publicly — with Pete Davidson. They had gotten engaged within weeks of dating. Pete proposed with a $93,000 custom pear-shaped ring. She dedicated a song to him on her Sweetener album, simply titled “Pete Davidson.”

“I’m marrying him,” she had said. “One hundred percent. I’m literally marrying him.”

But after Mac died, everything fell apart.

She and Pete broke up in October 2018. She later admitted the relationship had moved too fast. That she needed time to heal. That she needed to focus on herself.

“I’ve been in therapy since I was little,” she said. “I talk to my therapist about this a lot.”

In 2024, she announced a partnership with BetterHelp, pledging to donate up to $5 million in free therapy. The FTC later proposed a ban on the company for sharing users’ personal data for profit. Critics called it a money grab.

But her commitment to mental health advocacy — messy as it was — seemed genuine. She had seen the darkest corners. She had smelled sulfur in a car and watched a city bleed. She had lost the man she loved to the very demons she couldn’t save him from.

 

In 2020, she met Dalton Gomez, a real estate agent. They quarantined together during the pandemic — as many couples did, for better or worse. In May 2021, they married in a private ceremony.

But the marriage seemed cursed from the start.

Within five months, a man was arrested outside her home. By January 2022, fans noticed that the holiday cards she sent to Manchester victims were signed only by Ariana — not by Ariana and Dalton. In March 2022, her brother-in-law got married; she wasn’t in attendance.

In April 2023, discourse erupted about her extreme weight loss. She posted a TikTok addressing it: “I just wanted to address your concerns about my body and talk a little bit about what it means to be a person with a body.”

By July 2023, she was spotted without her wedding ring at Wimbledon. The same month, photos circulated of her with Ethan Slater — her Wicked co-star, best known for playing SpongeBob SquarePants on Broadway.

There was just one problem: Ethan had a wife. And a newborn child. He had posted a Mother’s Day tribute to her just two months earlier.

The internet labeled Ariana a homewrecker. She and Ethan faced significant backlash. But within months, her fans had accepted him. “That’s how I know fans are all bots,” one critic wrote.

 

On December 2, 2011 — more than a decade before any of this — Ariana had tweeted: “Loved seeing Wicked again. Amazing production. Made me realize again how badly I want to play Glinda at some point in my life. #dreamrole.”

In September 2022, she landed the role. She moved into a mega-mansion in London to film the two-part movie adaptation.

On the Zach Sang Show in 2024, she talked about becoming Glinda — the “witchiest witch.” She talked about her obsession with Jim Carrey, about method acting, about how she wanted to be so good at embodying a character that she wouldn’t have to switch out of it.

“I’m the witchiest witch there is,” she said. “Between being a literal witch — I’m not kidding — and being the most realistic, cut-and-dry person.”

 

There was one more controversy. One that, for many, crossed a line.

During a Q&A with young fans, someone asked Ariana: “If you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?”

She looked at her parents, who were in the room. “Mom, do you want me to say the real answer?”

They said yes.

“I mean, Jeffrey Dahmer’s pretty fascinating,” she said. “I think I would have loved to have met him.”

The room laughed. She laughed. But the families of Dahmer’s victims did not. They called her “sick in the fucking head.” They said something was wrong with her.

 

Ariana Grande is thirty-one years old. She has survived a terrorist attack that killed twenty-two of her fans. She has lost a former lover to an overdose. She has been called a diva, a homewrecker, a cannibal (her brother Frankie debunked that one: “She’s vegan”).

She has licked donuts and hated America and wished death upon her fans — or didn’t, depending on who you believe.

She has also raised millions for the victims of Manchester. She has stood on a stage in the face of terror and refused to be silenced. She has turned her pain into music, and her music has saved lives.

“I just wanted to give people a hug musically,” she said. “People have to be nicer. You see this on the news, it affects you, but not the same way. You tweet it, you post a picture, you send your condolences, you say something, and then you move on. But Christmas comes, and you’re thinking about it.”

Her voice cracked. She was crying.

“People are permanently affected by this. It just changes your life quite a bit.”

 

The donut shop footage will live forever. The Dahmer comment will follow her. The allegations of diva behavior and homewrecking and PR-stunt relationships will never fully disappear.

But so will the image of her, standing on a stage in Manchester, singing to fifty thousand people who had come to heal together.

Ariana Grande is not a saint. She’s not a monster.

She’s a witch — the witchiest witch, as she’d tell you herself.

And she’s still here.