Ariana Grande & Ethan Slater Are Reportedly Happy To Be 'Out of Hiding' After Affair Allegations
While the world awaits the movie musical Wicked, Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater are reportedly breathing a sigh of relief. In 2023, the headlines swirled from the London set that they allegedly engaged in an affair while she was married to Dalton Gomez and he was married to his high school sweetheart, Lilly Jay.
While the Broadway duo deny those claims and insist that their romance didn’t begin until they were both separated, Grande and Slater kept a very low profile over the last year. With the Wicked promotional train in full effect, they are reportedly thrilled that they don’t have to hide their love any longer. “Ethan and Ariana are out of hiding and happier than ever,” an insider told Life & Style. “They’re so excited for the film to come out and for chatter around how they got together to be behind them.”
Their pal is sticking to Grande and Slater’s side of events. “They’re good people who fell in love,” the source added. “This wasn’t a fling. Ethan and Ariana want to be together.” Still, it’s hard for some fans to forget that Jay lashed out publicly at Grande to Page Six in July 2023. “[Ariana’s] the story really. Not a girl’s girl,” she said. “My family is just collateral damage.” Jay shares a two-year-old son with Slater, so the split — no matter how it happened — was not easy.
The internet is also divided on Slater’s glow-up and how some people are rewriting his story in the wake of a highly anticipated movie. One person criticized the discourse on X, “I’m going to need y’all short attention span asses to stop posting Ethan Slater like he’s an innocent vulnerable man. Y’all lose the plot everyday and wonder why no one takes the social media uproar/tantrums yall throw every week seriously.”
Another account was clearly in Jay’s corner. “The current love for Ethan Slater tells me that all you guys’ outrage and cancel culture is purely performative and you don’t actually give a s**t about people doing wrong unless the internet is telling you that you have to. He cheated on his postpartum wife with his coworker,” they wrote.
The truth is only four people know what happened — Grande, Gomez, Slater, and Jay — it’s their story to tell if they want to. But for now, Grande and Slater are living out their romantic yellow-brick road dreams.
Before you go, click here to see celebrity exes who will always be friends.