What We Know About Ariana Grande's Absence at the 2023 Met Gala

Ariana Grande's Met Gala hiatus has officially been extended.

The international pop star has missed fashion's biggest night for the fifth year in a row. Though she has yet to publicly comment on her absence from the 2023 Met Gala, fans are well aware that Grande has been busy filming the movie adaptation of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, Wicked. Grande stars as Glinda alongside Cynthia Erivo's Elphaba in the Jon M. Chu-helmed films, which will be released in two parts in 2024 and 2025.

"We are deep into production on WICKED and everyday we get more and more excited to share with u the mischief we’ve been up to," Chu announced in a tweet this past March.

In April, the director teased a first look of the costars in their full costumes on set. In the still of Grande's portrayal as the Good Witch, the singer appears to be rushing up a flight of stairs while wearing a voluminous bubblegum pink ball gown. Meanwhile, Erivo holds what seems to be a staff while completely decked out in green body paint and a witchy all-black ensemble for her portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West.

Last month, Grande also updated fans on her Wicked journey.

"Savoring every millisecond left with my Galinda (although she’ll be with me irrevocably, forever)," she wrote on Instagram. "She shows me so many new things every day. I am so grateful, I don’t know what to do or say… to be here in Oz where everyday is a life changing one… to be feeling, learning and growing so much at such a disarming speed… to feel so much love around me, to begin each day before the sun is up and to end after it sets... To hold my brilliant twin flame / sister Cynthia’s beautiful, green hands every day… to work in the safest, most beautiful and loving, biggest-yet-most-intimate/tiny-feeling spaces."

Grande last attended the Met Gala in 2018, when she wore a magnificent Vera Wang ball gown that was screen-printed with images from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco.

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