Why Ariana Grande will never return The Voice as a coach

Ariana Grande has revealed why she’ll never return to The Voice as a coach.

The 31-year-old actor recalled being on season 21 of The Voice during an episode of Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers’ Las Culturistas podcast last month.

“I got so emotionally attached to everyone,” she explained about the The Voice contestants. “That’s my problem. I can’t really do that, ‘cause I really get in. I really get in there with everyone.”

She continued: “I love everyone so much. I love meeting people, and I felt so invested. And I still do, like I see them all on Instagram.”

Grande noted that while she hasn’t “really been in touch with anyone,” due to her busy schedule, she’s still “in touch” with former contests on The Voice on Instagram.

“I like their posts. I see their things, I see what they’re up to,” she added. “I’m still in touch with some of them. It’s just, I get very involved.”

In 2021, Grande replaced Nick Jonas as a coach on The Voice. She joined the show alongside then-coaches John Legend, Blake Shelton, and Kelly Clarkson. Before entering the gig, she explained that she was already such a big fan of the show.

“It’s so happy and infectiously joyous,” she said during an interview with 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.”

During her conversation with Yang and Rogers, the Wicked star opened up about where she sees her career going in the next 10 years. She explained that while she’s always going to make music, she wants to spend more time acting.

“I’m always going to go on stage. I’m always going to do pop stuff,” the “Positions” singer said. “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.”

Grande’s recent acting project has been a massive success, as she plays Glinda the Good Witch in John Chu’s Wicked. She stars in the film alongside Cynthia Erivo, who plays Elphaba.

Following its release on November 22, Wicked brought in $114 million at U.S. and Canadian theaters within the first weekend. The first part of the Universal Pictures film grossed $50.2 million in international markets, for a combined global total of $164.2 million. The film also became the highest-grossing Broadway adaptation after only eight days in theaters.

However, the double premiere of Wicked and Gladiator 2 failed to surpass the success of Barbenheimer — last summer’s dual release of Barbie and Oppenheimer — on opening weekend, coming in at $169.5 million domestically compared to $244 million.