Ariana Grande Admits How ‘SNL’ Star Pete Davidson Affected ‘Thank U, Next’

Ariana Grande’s hit “Thank U, Next” was almost a very different song.

The singer, who celebrated the release of her latest album, Thank U, Next, revealed in a new interview that she almost didn’t name drop her exes, but her breakup with Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson led her to include his name along with exes Big Sean, Ricky Alvarez and late rapper Mac Miller on the song.

The song was released in November, a month after she and Pete ended their engagement following a whirlwind summer romance. In the interview with the Zach Sang Show, released on Saturday, she said that Sean and Alvarez both loved the song, while also hinting she might not be in contact with Davidson anymore, as E! News first reported.

“Everyone that I am still in touch with has been very supportive of it,” Grande said.

In the first verse, Grande sings, “Thought I’d end up with Sean / But he wasn’t a match / Wrote some songs about Ricky / Now I listen and laugh / Even almost got married / And for Pete, I’m so thankful / Wish I could say ‘thank you’ to Malcolm / ‘Cause he was an angel.”

Grande said on the show that she had recorded another version of the song, which ended up being the first No. 1 on the Billboard charts of her career, without the names before deciding to release the other version.

“I was also trying to be protective,” she said. “In my relationship [with Pete] at the time, things were like up and down and on and off, and so I didn’t know what was going to happen and then we got back together, so I had to make a different version of it, and then we broke up again, so we ended up going with that verse.”

“There’s a version where I was getting married, there’s a version where I’m not getting married, there’s a version with nothing — we’re not talking about anything,” she continued. “But we all knew that the first version was gonna be the version we ultimately went with.”

Holding back her emotions, Grande added: “It was a big risk and a very scary thing to do, because it is my life. I understand that to a lot of people, I’m not a real person, or it’s easy to just kind of like see me as like, a song or a picture or like a thing that kind of exists in their head and they know what they know and that’s it. But at the end of the day, these are people and relationships. It’s real s–t to me. It is real life and I spent a lot of time with each of those people…it was like scary to put in a song.”

Since the split, Davidson has commented on the breakup several times and been involved in some public drama. He made headlines after posting a startling post on social media, with fans fearing he might hurt himself.

However, the comedian has since returned to Saturday Night Live and is now dating actress Kate Beckinsale.