In a candid new essay, Wicked actor Ethan Slater’s former spouse reveals the emotional toll of having her private heartbreak thrust into the spotlight following her husband’s high-profile relationship with co-star Ariana Grande.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Lilly Jay shared her experience in an essay for The Cut titled How Does My Divorce Make You Feel? published Thursday. “No one gets married thinking they’ll get divorced … but I really never thought I would get divorced. Especially not just after giving birth to my first child, and especially not in the shadow of my husband’s new relationship with a celebrity,” Jay wrote.
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The revelation of Slater’s relationship with Grande emerged in July 2023, when the 32-year-old actor filed for divorce just before their son’s first birthday. Jay reflected on the growing distance that developed while Slater filmed Wicked, where he met Grande, 31, in December 2022.
“As a perinatal psychologist, I knew all the statistics โ how vulnerable a marriage is in the postpartum period, how vital community connection is in preventing depression and anxiety, how new parenthood impacts a whole family โ but I confidently moved to another country with my 2-month-old baby and my husband to support his career,” she explained. “Consumed by the magic and mundanity of new motherhood, I didn’t miss the growing distance between us.”
The highly publicized split has particularly affected Jay’s professional life as a therapist, where she had intentionally cultivated a life of privacy. The widespread media coverage has made it challenging to maintain professional boundaries, as strangers now know intimate details about her personal life.
The situation has become especially difficult during the Wicked promotional tour. “Days with my son are sunny. Days when I can’t escape the promotion of a movie associated with the saddest days of my life are darker,” Jay wrote. The film has achieved significant success, earning $531.3 million and setting a record for the biggest opening weekend for a Broadway adaptation.
When the news initially broke, speculation arose about potential infidelity, which both Slater and Grande have addressed. “It’s really hard to see people who don’t know anything about what’s happening commenting on it and getting things wrong about the people you love,” Slater told GQ in October. Grande similarly expressed to Vanity Fair in September that it was “disappointing” to “see so many people believe the worst version” of events.
At the time the story first emerged, Jay had spoken to Page Six, describing Grande as “not a girl’s girl” and stating that her family was “just collateral damage.” However, in her recent essay, she takes a more forward-looking approach, writing that she has “come to believe that in the absence of the life I planned with my high school sweetheart, a lifetime of sweetness is waiting for me and my child.”
Despite the personal challenges, Jay emphasizes their continued commitment to co-parenting: “While our partnership has changed, our parenthood has not. Both of us fiercely love our son 100 percent of the time, regardless of how our parenting time is divided.”
Jay concludes her essay by reflecting on how this experience might benefit her therapeutic practice: “Maybe we can think about my messy not-so-personal life in that way: a dose of my own loss, rage, powerlessness, sadness that helps me hold yours. I cannot resolve the incongruity of a career in helping others prepare for the exquisite fragility and beauty of pregnancy and postpartum and then having my own world upended. But I can start hearing myself when I tell patients that avoidance maintains fear, and maybe it’s time to accept that I’m not unknown anymore.”