The Weeknd praises Ariana Grande’s performance in ‘Wicked’: “So proud”

The Weeknd has praised Ariana Grande‘s performance in Wicked.

• READ MORE: Everything we know about ‘Wicked Part Two’

Grande stars as Glinda, the future Good Witch of the North in the new film – the first of a two-part adaptation of the hit stage musical.

After seeing the movie, The Weeknd, who has collaborated with Grande musically in the past, shared a picture of the singer in the movie with Cynthia Erivo on his Instagram Story.

He wrote: “This was fantastic congrats @arianagrande. So proud.”

The pair have previously worked on a host of songs together, including Grande’s 2014 ‘My Everything’ track ‘Love Me Harder’ and 2020 ‘Positions’ song ‘Off The Table’, along with a remix of The Weeknd’s ‘Save Your Tears’ in 2021.

More recently, Grande put her vocals to a new remix of The Weeknd’s 2016 track ‘Die For You’.

Elsewhere, Camila Cabello recently praised Grande and Erivo for their performances in Wicked while also sharing a cover from the hit musical.

“You were brilliant Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo,” she captioned an Instagram story, which has since recirculated on X/Twitter. “Can’t stop listening and singing.”

The Jon M Chu-directed movie, which also stars Jonathan Bailey, Michelle Yeoh, Peter Dinklage and Jeff Goldblum, hit cinemas last month and was predicted by experts to be the biggest film of the year.

Although the musical failed to match the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon at the box office, it still fared extremely well – raking in $114million (£90.6million) domestically and $164.2million (£130.5million) globally for Universal Pictures on its debut, according to studio estimates.

Critics were quick to praise the vocal performances of its two leads, with Nick Levine noting that “Erivo and Grande are both vocally extraordinary” in NME‘s four-star review of Wicked, adding that “crucially, they also have crackling chemistry punctuated by Erivo’s bursts of intensity and Grande’s slick comic timing”.