Things come full circle, eventually. Ariana Grande’s manager Scooter Braun opened up about once being fired by the singer — and hinted that she came to her senses after she broke up with a “s—tty boyfriend.”
Braun, 37 — who manages Justin Bieber and has repped Kanye West — spoke with Variety in a candid interview and explained that he decided to stay quiet instead of speak out when he hit a rough patch with the “Breathin'” singer. “I watched this other manager get fired, and I saw him defend himself instantly and put out a lot of truths. And I watched the artist see those truths, not want to deal with it, and then forever hate that manager. And with Ariana, I could have said a lot of stuff, and in fact my team wanted me to, because they were pissed,” he said in the story, published on Tuesday, October 23. “But I said, ‘We’re not gonna say a word, and this is gonna come back around.’ They were like, ‘Never take her back!’ but I just said, ‘Let’s stay quiet and let our truth be our actions.’”
“And when s—tty boyfriends leave, she starts to see the light on some stuff, and one day I got a phone call,” the manager continued, laughing. “She said, ‘Can I see you tomorrow?’ and I said, ‘No, I’m busy’ — I actually couldn’t, so I said, ‘I could see you Thursday’ or whatever and I went over there and we had a very honest conversation.”
The “God Is a Woman” singer, 25, and Braun went their separate ways professionally in February 2016 before reuniting in September of that year. Although it is unclear who Grande was dating at the time, she and Big Sean broke up after eight months of dating in April 2015 and she began dating Mac Miller around August 2016.
Braun doesn’t have any hard feelings towards Grande, who is a current client of his, for terminating their work relationship — because they are stronger than ever nowadays: “It made me and her really tight, because now when we get into those fights and she’s coming at me, I just go, ‘Woah, do you want to go back to where we were?’ and then it kinda calms down.”
“That relationship we had, from being fired to getting back together, really gave us the strength for what we never imagined would come that following year,” he added, referencing the terrorist attack that occurred at Grande’s Manchester, England, concert in May 2017, killing 23 and injuring hundreds.
Despite Braun’s optimistic outlook, he expressed his frustration on October 13, after the “Side by Side” singer dropped out of a scheduled appearance following the death of Miller, who died of an apparent drug overdose September 7, and one day before she split from fiancé Pete Davidson. Not holding back, he told the audience at the F—k Cancer Gala in Los Angeles, “Someone I’m very close to was supposed to come sing for you today, and because of things that she’s going through, she couldn’t be here today. And while I was frustrated, being the manager, my wife, being who she always is, just looked at me and she goes, ‘She needs this time.’”
