During last year’s Wicked press tour, Ariana Grande earned viral moments at the drop of a hat — and one of her funniest clips found her somewhat playfully challenging the validity of the 1969 moon landing during a Vanity Fair lie detector test. Back on the promotional circuit for Wicked: For Good, Grande encountered the moon landing question a second time, with co-star Bowen Yang lobbing the inquiry instead of Cynthia Erivo.
“I feel like we have some air to clear,” Grande said as she got hooked up to the polygraph. “That moon thing doesn’t sit well with me. I think sometimes I get nervous. Is it picking up truth or lie, or is it picking up waves of panic? The moon landing has happened! And f— off if it didn’t!”
After Yang reminded Grande that her last moon landing answer was ruled “inconclusive,” he asked the “Twilight Zone” singer a second time. She responded, “I wanna move past it,” before her Wicked: For Good co-star asked if she believed Gayle King and Katy Perry went to the moon earlier this year. “No, because they didn’t,” she replied. “They orbited the Earth… or went for a few minutes up and down.”
While Grande was correct in this specific instance (the Blue Origin crew went 60 miles above the Earth), Yang continued his intergalactic line of questioning, asking Grande if she would sing for her “fellow travelers,” as Perry famously did, should she ever have the opportunity to visit space. “No, I wouldn’t sing in space,” she promptly responded. “I wouldn’t do that trip, personally. I do love space, but I’m staying right here for now. I think it makes sense. I’ll look from my yard or from a plane, not breaking certain layers.”
Like any great investigator, Yang gave Grande a brief break to talk about potentially confronting impersonators before returning to the moon. “Do you believe that there is a flag planted on the moon?” he asked, to which Grande replied, “Bowen… I hear both arguments. The truth is: I don’t give a rat’s ass! I’m worried about Earth, goddamn it! We’re burning alive! We’re killing each other! Can we worry about Earth for five minutes? Who gives a f— about the moon and the flag! How did you get me here again? You guys!”
Safe to say, Grande handled this lie detector test a bit more smoothly than the last one. And she also got a chance give some of the Emmy-nominated Saturday Night Live star’s energy right back to him. “Did you enjoy kissing me?” Ariana asked in reference to the smooch the pair shared during a 2024 SNL episode. “It was the only time I kissed someone where a crowd screamed in horror, so I think I liked it?”
Taking it one step further, Grande then asked if she was a better kisser than Sydney Sweeney, whom Yang kissed in another SNL episode. “You were,” he replied. “Because she and I did it in a very rushed way. We had an intimacy coordinator, lovely woman, who was like ‘Keep the lips closed, no tongue,’ and I was like ‘Got it.’”
Grande and Yang’s lie detector marathon arrives just over a week before Wicked: For Good, the sequel to 2024’s Oscar-winning Wicked, hits theaters on Nov. 21. Alongside favorites from the Broadway musical’s second act like “For Good” and “No Good Dead,” the show’s legendary composer, Stephen Schwartz, penned two new songs for the Jon M. Chu-helmed film. Grande’s Glinda will perform “The Girl in the Bubble,” while Erivo’s Elphaba will sing “No Place Like Home.” Last week, Grande, Erivo and the entire Wicked cast mounted a television special titled Wicked: One Wonderful Night to celebrate the release of Wicked: For Good.
Check out Grande and Yang’s complete lie detector test below.
