“Everything about me, I had to deconstruct to prove to them I could handle taking on this other person.”

There’s something different about Ariana Grande, and we’re not talking about her obvious ‘Glinda’ blonde hair. Ariana’s speaking voice has been a big topic of conversation recently, and comments have only increased following her appearance at the Oscars.

Ariana presented Best Original Song alongside her Wicked co-star Cynthia Erivo, but audiences at home couldn’t help but question her apparent ‘new voice’.

Ever since she started filming Wicked, Ariana’s voice has sounded noticeably different. While she hasn’t directly addressed the comments head on, she did explain how her preparation for her role as Glinda has an effect on her real life self.

Speaking on The Zach Sang Show on the Amazon Music channel on Twitch, Ariana revealed just how much of her self she had to shed in order to fully immerse herself in the character to secure the role. As a result, her speaking voice, as well as her singing voice, has now changed.

“I’ve never wanted anything as badly as this,” she said. “And I tried to use that to take lessons every single day while I was doing The Voice and get ready for these auditions,” she said.

“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.”

She continued: “I kind of 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. So I really had to go all the way to strip that down.”

In the full Zach Sang interview, you can hear Ariana’s real voice when she speaks at length about her new album and upcoming projects.

Fans have also noticed differences in Ariana’s musical performances. Ariana performed on SNL last week (Mar 9) and fans couldn’t help but notice how much her “popstar singing voice” has also improved thanks to her Wicked training. (Not that it wasn’t spectacular already!)

In one post praising her incredible performance of ‘Imperfect For You’, one fan wrote: She’s enunciating the heck out of these words omg. Thank you @wickedmovie”