It looks like Ariana Grande might be experiencing a bit of an accent hangover.
Remember how Austin Butler wrestled to ditch the southern drawl he picked up while playing the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 2022′s Elvis? Butler had mastered the accent so well that it took him nearly two years to shake off the accent.
Well, now fans think the Wicked star is stuck in the same conundrum after Grande presented at Sunday’s 96th Academy Awards with what appeared to be the same voice she used to play Glinda in the forthcoming fantasy film.
While presenting the Best Original Song and Score award alongside her Wicked co-star, Cynthia Erivo, many social media users noticed Grande’s voice sounded awfully similar to her voice as Glinda in the film’s trailer.
People on X (formerly Twitter) were left confused over her vocal transition, with many comparing the switch-up to Butler’s struggle to drop the late Elvis’ accent he adopted for Baz Luhrmann’s film.
Grande hasn’t publicly addressed whether she was purposely speaking like Glinda at the Oscars.
The Victorious star has previously been accused of altering the way her voice sounds. She garnered criticism in 2018 for allegedly using a “blaccent” during interviews with the press.
The “yes, and?” singer addressed her vocal changes on the Zach Sang Show last month, noting that she had to “completely erase popstar Ari” to prepare for the upcoming big screen adaptation of “Wicked.”
Crediting her acting and vocal coaches for training her, she told Sang, “I trained every day with Nancy [Banks] and with Eric [Vetro] to transform my voice, even — like, my singing voice — everything about me, I had to deconstruct to prove to them I could handle taking on this other person.”
Grande added: “I had to completely erase popstar Ari, the person they know so well, because it’s even harder to believe someone as someone else when you’re so branded as one thing. I had to go all the way to strip that down, come into my callback with no makeup, my hair down, I looked like I was 11 years old.”