Tuesday, October 01, 2024
Ariana Grande Addresses Criticism Over Voice Change for 'Wicked'
www.hollywoodreporter.com: Ariana Grande is calling out the criticism she has received over her voice change for her Wicked role.
The singer, who is set to star as Glinda alongside Cynthia Erivo in the Jon M. Chu-directed film based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 book, has been called out online for her different speaking voices.
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4 comments:
Why are we even having this conversation. I don’t know that much about Ariana Grande but like… wow. It’s almost like actors act! Which often includes altering their voice, putting on a dialect, or yes, speaking in a different register. And if she’s in that role so many hours a day for the duration of filming, yeah, it makes sense that it might be hard to transition out of that, or even that she might want to use that voice for promotional materials in the name of consistency and raising excitement for the movie. Let people be people and live their lives and do their jobs. Why is this controversial? Even just within singing, singers use a variety of registers and techniques to accomplish different things or achieve a certain sound. This is all craft and skill, not manipulation. I hate the epidemic of “chill.” People do stuff on purpose. For good reasons!
As soon as I saw the title of this article, my mind immediately went to Austin Butler’s voice change after his work on Elvis, which the article then went on to mention in comparison to the criticism Ariana Grande has been receiving. It’s sadly not surprising, yet still somehow shocking, how there is still such a difference in public response between male and female actors doing the exact same thing for a role. I remember very recently still seeing people posting comparison clips of Austin Butler before and after his Elvis role, and the commentary was always more “this is crazy” or “look how into the role he got” rather than criticism. It’s sad to see that people still have such an intrinsic bias that their first reaction to Ariana Grande changing her voice for a role is to question her talent, especially considering that to be able to change your voice for a role demonstrates incredible skill and vocal control as well as commitment to the job.
I think this is a really interesting conversation that would not be happening if Ariana Grande wasn't famous. I am not an actor but I do know that many people will alter their voice just as they alter their own mannerisms to fit a character. The actors aren't portraying themselves on stage, they are showing us a character that exists in a creative setting. But because of Ariana's famous status a large portion of the viewers only see her as the famous pop star that they know. The person that they are seeing on the screen is not Glinda from wicked but the actor playing that character. This is similar to animated movies and watching the voice actor recording in a booth. The more famous voices stick out and instead of becoming immersed in the story you're suddenly questioning if the voice you're hearing is one of a famous actor. In my own personal opinion this is one of the major downsides to hiring extremely famous people to play large roles in blockbuster movies.
I think it’s kind of ridiculous that people expect a person to be able to completely replicate the voice tone and vocal mannerisms of another person, especially since those are two different people. Rarely will they ever have the same voice, so expecting it to be that way is pretty silly especially when you consider that there have been multiple Glinda’s on broadway all with their own unique voices, so who exactly is she supposed to replicate. Actors copying previous actors stifles creativity and interpretation(taking inspiration is perfectly fine however I do think for certain things taking too much inspiration is a bad thing) it would be a little boring if Arianna just copied because then what would be the point of her performance in the movie, it would just be the broadway run all over again, In order to justify this movie’s existence some meaningful changes should be done, like in the acting, so I think it’s good that Arianna doing her own spin on things
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