Ariana Grande Tells Why She’ll Never Return to ‘The Voice’

The spinning red chair might have been fun, but Ariana Grande‘s heart couldn’t take the emotional toll of being a coach on The Voice. The Wicked star, who served as a coach during the show’s 21st season in 2021, recently revealed on the Las Culturistas podcast why she won’t be returning to the singing competition.

“I got so emotionally attached to everyone,” Grande explained to hosts Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers. “That’s my problem. I can’t really do that, ’cause I really get in. I really get in there with everyone.”

Despite her busy schedule — including her recent success as Glinda in Wicked, which grossed $114 million at U.S. and Canadian theaters in its first weekend and $50.2 million internationally — Grande maintains connections with her former contestants through social media. “I love everyone so much,” she shared. “I love meeting people, and I felt so invested. And I still do, like I see them all on Instagram.”

The 31-year-old pop star still follows her team members’ journeys, including Bella DeNapoli, David Vogel, and Raquel Trinidad. “I like their posts, I see their things, I see what they’re up to,” she noted, adding that while she hasn’t “really been in touch with anyone” recently due to her schedule, she remains “very involved” through social media, expressing particular joy about Bella’s new baby and Sasha Allen’s solo music career.

Before joining the show, Grande was already an enthusiastic fan. “It’s so happy and infectiously joyous,” she told Stage Right Secrets in 2021. “I also am super moved by how brilliant the performers are and by their voices and the opportunity to work with artists who dream of doing what we get to do is a really fun and cool thing.”

When Grande first joined the show, replacing Nick Jonas alongside coaches Blake Shelton, Kelly Clarkson, and John Legend, she quickly discovered the role’s challenges. “You watch it on TV and you think you know, ‘OK, I’m going get in there and it’s going to be easy, whatever,’” she told E! News in 2021. “But it’s so hard. [The other coaches] are so seasoned and so great at it.”

Looking ahead, Grande’s focus has shifted away from music and toward acting and musical theater. “I’m always going to go on stage. I’m always going to do pop stuff,” she explained on Las Culturistas. “But I don’t think doing it at the rate that I’ve been doing it for the past ten years is where I see the next ten years. I think I love acting. I love musical theater. I think reconnecting with this part of myself, who started in musical theater and who loves comedy, and it heals me to do that. Finding roles to use these parts of myself, and put them in little homes and characters and bits.”

Her transition seems to be paying off; Wicked became the highest-grossing Broadway adaptation after just eight days in theaters, though its opening weekend combined with Gladiator 2 brought in $169.5 million domestically, falling short of Barbenheimer’s $244 million record.