Over the past several years, Ariana Grande has gone from pop princess to full-on pop superstar.
Her music has topped the charts, again and again, and she’s been busy collaborating with some of music’s biggest stars, such as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber.
But there’s so much more to the star than just her wicked voice or love of cat ears.
Enter, these 10+ things fans didn’t know.
1. She originally got her start in musical theatre:
The 26-year-old has been hustling for a career in music for some time. She performed with the Fort Lauderdale Children’s Theater as a kid.
This led to some major Broadway roles.
This included the leading role in *Annie*.
She also starred in the Broadway musical, 13 .
Her love for Broadway had a lot to do with the advice that Kristin Chenoweth told her backstage at Wicked after hearing 10-year-old Ariana sing.
She said: “Just remember to follow your passion. Do what you love.”
“I was like, ‘This is scary, let’s leave.'”
“I rolled down the window before we left and said, “We apologize. We didn’t mean to disrupt your peace.” Then I took a picture and there are three super distinct faces in the picture—they’re faces of textbook demons.”
2. She’s vegan:
The Boyfriend singer tweeted about this decision in 2013.
“I’ve eaten organically since I was little and always kept meat minimal but today marks my first day as a 100% Vegan!!!! Joyous day,” she wrote, along with a ton of animal emojis.
3. She used to play the french horn:
“I played french horn for a few years,” she told a fan on Twitter . But if there’s any instrument that she’d love to learn, it’s the violin.
In that same tweet, she called it “the most beautiful sound in the world.”
4. She has 10 dogs!
You’ll often spot one or two (or all 10!) on her Instagram!
Their names are Cinnamon, Coco, Fawkes, Ophelia, Toulouse, Sirius, Strauss, Pignoli and Lafayette, and Myron.
And, since she’s a lover of animals, most of them are rescue dogs <3.
5. She’s allergic to cats:
“I’m allergic to cats… Couldn’t resist though,” she tweeted in 2010 when sharing an image of a cat.
Her being allergic is quite ironic, considering she played Cat Valentine in Victorious and Sam & Cat . She also loves cat ears!
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6. She’s obsessed with Harry Potter:
Get this: she even named her black dog after Sirius Black!
But if that’s not enough proof of her being a superfan, this tweet from 2017 should be.
In it, she responded to a tweet from Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling.
7. She’s a whiz at vocal impressions:
Whenever she’s on late-night TV shows like SNL or The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon , she gets the chance to show off her talent.
In the past, she’s nailed her Jennifer Lawrence impression and she’s also got a knack for impersonating singers.
8. She hates her debut single and its music video:
The 2011 song is called “Put Your Hearts Up.” In 2014, she explained her distaste for it to Rolling Stone :
“It was geared toward kids and felt so inauthentic and fake,” she said.
The music video wasn’t any better.
“For the video, they gave me a bad spray tan and put me in a princess dress and had me frolic around the street. The whole thing was straight out of hell. I still have nightmares about it and I made them hide it on my Vevo page.”
9. People have been mispronouncing her last name for years:
Turns out, it’s not pronounced like the Starbucks drink size.
“My brother was like, we should say ‘Gran-day,'” Ariana said in a Beats One interview.
“It’s so fun to say it. I grew up saying ‘Grand-ee’ and I think of my grandpa and I wish I said ‘Grand-ee’ more,” Grande told the interviewer.
10. Her brother, Frankie, competed on *Big Brother*:
The self-professed “Social Media Mogul” competed on Season 16 of the popular CBS series.
He was a fan-favorite at first, but that quickly dwindled once he appeared very full of himself and the fact that he’s Ariana Grande’s brother…
11. She has a religious connection to Kabbalah:
This is considered a pearl of ancient wisdom from the Jewish religion .
Grande explained her connection to it in 2014. “They were building a Kabbalah center in Florida so [me and my brother] checked it out and really had a connection with it,” Grande told the Telegraph .
“[Kabbalah] sort of stuck with me.”
“And since then my life has unfolded in a really beautiful way, and I think that it has a lot to do with the tools I’ve learned through Kabbalah, I really do.”
12. Gloria Estefan practically discovered her:
In case you don’t know who Gloria Estefan is, she’s a Latin music superstar.
She’s also the one who encouraged Ariana to keep singing when she heard the eight-year-old sing.
This all happened when Ariana was on a cruiseship singing Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Gone On’ on karaoke.
“After I was done somebody came up to me and was like, ‘Gloria Estefan would like to speak to you’. I was like, ‘are you serious?’ and my brother was like, ‘Are you serious?’ and we went together to go say hi to her. She was like, ‘I just want to let you know that you are so talented and do not ever give up’. It was crazy.”
13. She believes in demons:
Her favorite holiday is Halloween, so this makes sense.
“I used to have a folder called Demons that had pictures with all the screencaps in it, but then weird things started happening to me so I deleted it,” she told Complex .
That’s not the only paranormal experience she’s had…
Something weird also went down in a haunted castle.
“I felt this sick, overwhelming feeling of negativity over the whole car and we smelled sulfur, which is the sign of a demon, and there was a fly in the car randomly, which is another sign of a demon,” she recalled to Complex .
