Insider‘s story on Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun featured more than just insight into Braun’s reported impact on Bieber and his ex Selena Gomez’s past on-off romance. A source also detailed how management being deeply involved in Grande’s relationship—and eventual called-off engagement—to Saturday Night Live comedian Pete Davidson affected the trajectory of Davidson and Grande’s whirlwind romance, which ended in October 2018.
Both Davidson and Grande have moved on now. Grande is married to Dalton Gomez, and Davidson is dating Kim Kardashian, much to the chagrin of Kardashian’s ex (and Braun’s former client) Kanye West.
Insider reported that Braun actually introduced Grande and Davidson. A month after their breakup, Grande released “Thank U, Next,” a massive commercial success for her with its record-breaking YouTube video. (It was the most watched music video debut in the platform’s history.)
A person close to the situation told Insider that Davidson felt “blindsided” by the release. “I think their relationship didn’t get a fair shake because management was so involved.”
Davidson admitted to be blindsided by the song coming out during a late December 2018 comedy show in Boston. A source told E! then that Davidson joked about it during the show, saying, “Here’s the thing about the breakup song. Usually breakup songs you know who it’s about but you don’t really know. That G named all of us. Bam. She named all of us. And then, tells us, yeah, he has a big dick.”
Davidson, noting the video came out right before he had to go on SNL, said, “That shit came out before I had to put on a f*cking duck hat and be like, ‘derrrp here’s the pizza!’ So all my friends were there. It was a sad day. We didn’t know it was going to happen.”
Upon playing it, Davidson and his friends, “We’re all like, ‘Ehhh… it’s ok.’ We’re like ‘Okay, it’s not that bad for you.’” In the song, Grande sings of Davidson, “Even almost got married / And for Pete, I’m so thankful.”
Grande told Billboard in a story released weeks before Davidson’s comedy show that she did send Davidson “Thank U, Next” before releasing it. “I wasn’t going to blindside anybody,” she said.
Grande later reflected on their romance to Vogue in her cover story published in July 2019. After her breakup with Mac Miller, “My friends were like, ‘Come [to New York City]! We’re gonna have a fun summer.’” she recalled. “And then I met Pete, and it was an amazing distraction. It was frivolous and fun and insane and highly unrealistic, and I loved him, and I didn’t know him. I’m like an infant when it comes to real life and this old soul, been-around-the-block-a-million-times artist. I still don’t trust myself with the life stuff.”
“I think that this is the first album [Thank U, Next] and also the first year of my life where I’m realizing that I can no longer put off spending time with myself, just as me,” she added. “I’ve been boo’d up my entire adult life. I’ve always had someone to say goodnight to. So Thank U, Next was this moment of self-realization. It was this scary moment of ‘Wow, you have to face all this stuff now. No more distractions. You have to heal all this shit.’”
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