At the start of the year, Ariana Grande, the American pop singer was rumored to be dating Ethan Slater, a married actor who was also part of the cast of “Wicked”, a movie in which she plays the lead. The rumors were confirmed when she and Slater went public a few months later, however, according to sources close to both, Slater had already divorced his wife when him and Grande started going out, but that clarification was not enough to stop the internet from calling Ariana a ‘homewrecker’, a scandal that threatened to tarnish the success of the film.
Now, the trailer for the movie has been released, and Slater’s character is completely absent, so naturally, people started to wonder if they deliberately did not include any scene with Slater to avoid further conversations about the alleged homewrecking with Ariana Grande.
As more information about the movie was revealed, we learned that the reason why Ethan Slater’s character is nowhere to be seen in the trailer is because he is playing a rather small role that does not need to appear on the trailer because it does not add much to the development of the plot itself. Ariana Grande, who appears on the entirety of the trailer, is playing the co-protagonist, Galinda, while Ethan is playing Boq, a relevant character, but certainly not essential, so the director of the film decided not to include any scenes with him on the first trailer.
It’s important to mention that there have been no reports of any discussions about whether or not including Ethan Slater’s character in the trailer for the movie due to the controversial nature of his relationship with Ariana Grande and how badly it could impact the marketing rollout and commercial performance of the production, but it definitely looks like the right choice to leave Boq out of the frame for a while, just to avoid any risks of the controversy being brought up again.
What do you think, should’ve the director included Ethan Slater’s acting role in the trailer to generate more buzz around the movie, or is the trailer better without him?