Ariana Grande‘s manager, Scooter Braun, recently gave a candid interview to Variety in which he spoke about the star, revealing that she once went through a difficult time in her life due to the influence of someone she was dating.
In the interview, Braun spoke about the time Grande fired him, explaining that he had seen another manager go through a similar situation and knew he didn’t want to react the same way.
Videos by PopCulture.com
“I watched this other manager get fired, and I saw him defend himself instantly and put out a lot of truths. And I watched the artist see those truths, not want to deal with it, and then forever hate that manager,” he said. “And with Ariana, I could have said a lot of stuff, and in fact my team wanted me to, because they were pissed. But I said, ‘We’re not gonna say a word, and this is gonna come back around.’ They were like, ‘Never take her back!’ but I just said, ‘Let’s stay quiet and let our truth be our actions.’”
Grande later rehired Braun, which the manager attributed to the singer’s ex no longer being in her life.
“When s—y boyfriends leave, she starts to see the light on some stuff, and one day I got a phone call,” Braun recalled. “She said ‘Can I see you tomorrow?’ and I said, ‘No, I’m busy’ — I actually couldn’t, so I said ‘I could see you Thursday’ or whatever and I went over there and we had a very honest conversation.”
Grande and Braun’s professional split happened in February 2016, and the pair began working together in September of that year. Grande split with boyfriend Ricky Alvarez in July 2016 and began dating Mac Miller later that year.
Braun shared that the situation made him “a better manager” and “allowed me to know that I can be fired.”
“Also it made me and her really tight, because now when we get into those fights and she’s coming at me, I just go, ‘Woah, do you want to go back to where we were?,’ and then it kinda calms down,” he explained.
Braun added that his experience reuniting with Grande prepared them both for the difficulty they would face in 2017, when Grande’s concert in Manchester was attacked by a suicide bomber in May.
“That relationship we had, from being fired to getting back together, really gave us the strength for what we never imagined would come that following year,” he said.
Photo Credit: Getty / Kevin Mazur/MTV1415
