Ariana Grande revealed on The Hollywood Reporter\u2019s Awards Chatter podcast that Mac Miller encouraged her to embrace her natural brown hair as she transitioned from her Nickelodeon days. David X Prutting\/BFA \/ Shutterstock<\/p>\n
Ariana Grande says Mac Miller helped her find herself \u2014 brown hair and all.<\/p>\n
The \u201cWicked\u201d star, 32, opened up about the late rapper\u2019s influence on her career during a December appearance<\/a> at Chapman University for The Hollywood Reporter\u2019s Awards Chatter podcast<\/a>, which aired this week. <\/p>\n She made rare comments about her ex-boyfriend, revealing for the first time that Miller encouraged her to reclaim her natural brunette color and R&B sound as she transitioned from her Nickelodeon days.<\/p>\n The singer began dyeing her hair red in 2009 for her role as Cat Valentine on Nickelodeon\u2019s \u201cVictorious\u201d and maintained the vibrant shade through 2014. Getty Images<\/p>\n The pop star split her time between filming \u201cSam & Cat\u201d during the week and performing music on weekends, toning her hair brown on Fridays and restoring the red by Monday mornings. Awards Chatter<\/p>\n Grande and Miller first collaborated on her 2013 breakout hit \u201cThe Way,\u201d three years before they began dating. FilmMagic<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never talked about this, but actually Malcolm, who you might know as Mac, encouraged me to be myself,\u201d Grande shared. He reassured her \u201cthat it was okay to kind of shed that character and embrace my brown hair and make R&B-influenced pop music and separate and do the brave thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Grande and Miller first collaborated on her breakout 2013 single \u201cThe Way\u201d<\/a> from her debut album \u201cYours Truly,\u201d which was released in August 2013. The pair didn\u2019t go public with their romance until September 2016, three years after their musical partnership began, but she felt Miller\u2019s influence from the beginning.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s also a part of why I was so eager to ask him to be a part of it,\u201d the Grammy winner explained. \u201cNot only because he was so perfect for the song, but I also felt like I had him to thank for finding my sound.\u201d<\/p>\n The couple dated until May 2018, splitting amicably before Miller\u2019s death from an accidental overdose<\/a> in September 2018 at age 26.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tShop \u2019til you drop with Post Wanted\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSave time and money with the latest deals, discounts, trends, reviews and more.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n The Grammy winner credited Miller with helping her find her signature R&B-influenced pop sound on her debut album \u201cYours Truly.\u201d Getty Images for Nickelodeon<\/p>\n Grande dated Miller from September 2016 until their amicable split in May 2018, four months before his death from an accidental overdose. Getty Images<\/p>\n Grande spent three years as a blonde while portraying Glinda in the \u201cWicked\u201d movies, only going back to brunette in October 2025. Getty Images<\/p>\n Grande began dyeing her hair red in 2009 for her role as Cat Valentine on Nickelodeon\u2019s \u201cVictorious,\u201d and maintained the color through the 2014 cancellation of spinoff \u201cSam & Cat.\u201d During the final years, she split her time between filming during the week and performing music on weekends.<\/p>\n \u201cI think there was definitely a time when it was hard to do [acting and music] at the same time,\u201d Grande recalled. She would tone her hair brown on Friday nights after wrapping filming, then do a clarifying rinse late Sunday to restore the red for Monday morning call times at 6 a.m.<\/p>\n \u201cThat completely destroyed my hair,\u201d Grande\u00a0wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post<\/a>\u00a0in 2014, explaining why she always wore her signature ponytail.<\/p>\n The singer has since embraced her natural brunette shade, showing off a rich, warm dye job<\/a> in October after spending three years blond for her \u201cWicked\u201d role. She told the Zach Sang show<\/a> in 2020 that the red hair represented Cat Valentine, a character she loves but is \u201cnot me.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ariana Grande revealed on The Hollywood Reporter\u2019s Awards Chatter podcast that Mac Miller encouraged her to embrace her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1550,405,49,48,18429,362,75,172841,341,31619,81080],"class_list":["post-410620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ariana-grande","tag-beauty","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrity-hairstyles","tag-celebrity-news","tag-entertainment","tag-mac-miller","tag-music","tag-nickelodeon","tag-page-six-style"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}