{"id":284246,"date":"2025-11-14T15:42:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T15:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/284246\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T15:42:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T15:42:09","slug":"man-who-grabbed-ariana-grande-in-singapore-charged-in-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/284246\/","title":{"rendered":"Man who grabbed Ariana Grande in Singapore charged in court"},"content":{"rendered":"

A man who jumped over a barricade and grabbed actress Ariana Grande at a Wicked: For Good<\/a> premiere in Singapore has been charged with being a public nuisance.<\/p>\n

A now viral video shows the Australian man, Johnson Wen, pushing past photographers and charging at Grande while the cast made its way down a yellow carpet surrounded by fans. Co-star Cynthia Erivo could be seen wrestling the stunned actress away from Mr Wen.<\/p>\n

The 26-year-old had posted on Instagram late on Thursday that he was “free after being arrested”.<\/p>\n

However, on Friday afternoon, he was charged with being a public nuisance by a Singapore court. The incident caused massive outrage in the city state.<\/p>\n

Local media reports say Mr Wen, who was unrepresented, intends to plead guilty.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time Mr Wen, who describes himself as a “Troll Most Hated”, has invaded a concert or event.<\/p>\n

His Instagram feed includes clips of him disrupting other celebrity events, including jumping on stage at Katy Perry’s Sydney concert in June this year. He did the same at a concert by The Chainsmokers last December.<\/p>\n

If found guilty, he may be fined up to S$2000 ($1540; \u00a31170).<\/p>\n

Fans had earlier called for him to be arrested and deported.<\/p>\n

“There needs to be action [taken] against him as this is clearly a criminal offence,” wrote an Instagram user, in a comment a video Mr Wen posted of his act.<\/p>\n

“Oh wow so you do this a lot… how aren’t you in jail?” one Instagram user wrote.<\/p>\n

Several accused Mr Wen of “re-traumatising” Grande, who has spoken of experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder after a suicide bomb attack<\/a> at the end of her May 2017 concert in Manchester, killing 22 people and injuring hundreds.<\/p>\n

“Ariana has been through so many scary things… and at her Manchester concert and you thought it would be fun to jump the barricade?” said another comment on Instagram.<\/p>\n

Some fans also criticised security officers at the Thursday event for not being vigilant enough; while others called for social media platforms to ban Mr Wen’s videos.<\/p>\n

In clips circulating online, Grande appeared shocked when she was grabbed by the intruder. Her co-stars Michelle Yeoh and Erivo can be seen comforting her while Mr Wen was escorted away by security.<\/p>\n

Grande has not commented on the incident, and the rest of the event proceeded as planned.<\/p>\n

The BBC has reached out to Singapore’s police and immigration authority for comment.<\/p>\n

\"Ariana<\/p>\n

Hundreds of Singapore fans had queued up to meet the cast of Wicked [Getty Images]<\/p>\n

Hundreds of fans had gathered in a sea of green and pink at the Wicked: For Good Asia-Pacific premiere in a Singapore mall, including some who had stood in line for as long as eight hours before it began.<\/p>\n

The movie, to be released on 21 November, is the second of a two-part adaptation of the popular Broadway and West End musical Wicked, which centres on the unlikely friendship between two very different witches.<\/p>\n

The musical itself is a spin-off of the 1900 children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.<\/p>\n

Grande, who plays the good witch Glinda, was decked out in a champagne pink sequin dress at the premiere while Erivo, who plays the wicked witch, wore a black tube grown embroidered with roses.<\/p>\n

They were joined by co-star Jeff Goldblum who plays the wizard.<\/p>\n

The first movie, Wicked, was the highest-grossing movie of 2024 in the UK, and scored 10 Oscar nominations<\/a>, winning two for best costume and production design.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who jumped over a barricade and grabbed actress Ariana Grande at a Wicked: For Good premiere…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[24871,64,63,447,125657,134,163325,164166,57506,942,164165],"class_list":["post-284246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ariana-grande","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-cynthia-erivo","tag-entertainment","tag-johnson-wen","tag-mr-wen","tag-public-nuisance","tag-singapore","tag-singapore-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}