- Ariana Grande is a musician and actress and though she’s famous, there are a lot of things you might not know about her.
- Grande has been on Broadway and she has said she’s vegan and allergic to cats.
- She has said she resents her debut single “Put Your Hearts Up” and its music video, calling it “straight out of hell.”
- Visit INSIDER’s homepage for more stories.
You might be familiar with Ariana Grande’s early stint as Cat Valentine on the Nickelodeon shows “Victorious” and “Sam and Cat” and you probably know of her music, including her latest album “Sweetener.” But there are probably some surprising things you didn’t know about the songstress.
Here are 10 things you might not have known about Ariana Grande.
She got her start in musical theater.
Before landing a gig on the Nickelodeon show “Victorious,” Grande was involved in musical theater.
A native Floridian, Grande performed with the Fort Lauderdale Children’s Theater as a child. One of her performances included the leading role in “Annie.”
She also starred in the Broadway musical, "13."
She's allergic to cats.
Even though she played Cat Valentine in "Victorious" and "Sam & Cat," the former Nickelodeon star is allergic to her namesake.
She shared her cat allergy in a tweet in 2010.
One of her singles earned her some major status as a pop icon — and a lawsuit.
According to ABC news, Grande was sued in 2013 for allegedly copying a lyric for her smash hit, "The Way," featuring Mac Miller.
According to the suit, "The Way" allegedly copied a lyric from the 1972 song " Troglodyte (Cave Man)" by The Jimmy Castor Bunch.
In 2015, New York Daily News reported that the suit reached a confidential settlement.
She's got a few special vocal impressions up her sleeve.
Grande's impression of Jennifer Lawrence stole the show on "Saturday Night Live." But the "Hunger Games" star isn't the only celeb whose vocals Grande can impersonate.
She also showed off her musical impressions on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," where she impersonated singers like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
The first song she remembers singing is "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."
In a 2012 interview with Neon Limelight, Grande said "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" is the first song she remembers singing.
In that same interview, she shared that "The Wizard of Oz" was her favorite movie when she was younger.
She resents her debut single and its music video.
The 2011 song, "Put Your Hearts Up," was a bubblegum-pop proclamation of positivity, but Grande felt anything but positive about the "inauthentic" track and its music video.
"It was geared toward kids and felt so inauthentic and fake," Grande told Rolling Stone in 2014. "For the video, they gave me a bad spray tan and put me in a princess dress and had me frolic around the street. The whole thing was straight out of hell. I still have nightmares about it and I made them hide it on my Vevo page."
Currently, it appears the video is still hidden from her Vevo page or it has been deleted.
She shares a manager with a few fellow big names.
Ariana Grande's manager Scooter Braun also helped Justin Bieber achieve worldwide fame. Braun also manages Carly Rae Jepsen, Tori Kelly, and Dan + Shay, among others.
Her last name isn't pronounced the way you might think.
In a Beats One interview, Ariana Grande shared that her grandpa didn't pronounce her last name as many commonly do: "Grahn-day."
"My brother was like, we should say 'Gran-day.' It's so fun to say it. I grew up saying 'Grand-ee' and I think of my grandpa and I wish I said 'Grand-ee' more," Grande told the interviewer.
Grande says she is 100% vegan.
In 2013, Grande tweeted she was going "100% vegan," adding that her "heart feels very happy" with the dietary decision.
Grande's trainer, Harley Pasternak, described Grande's diet as "macrobiotic Japanese" to Glamour magazine.
Read More: I ate like Ariana Grande for a week - and I am baffled at how she does it
She said she was raised Catholic, but now has a connection with Kabbalah.
In an interview with Telegraph in 2014, Grande explained that she grew up Catholic, but later found a connection with Kabbalah.
"They were building a Kabbalah center in Florida so [me and my brother] checked it out and really had a connection with it," Grande told Telegraph. "[Kabbalah] sort of stuck with me. And since then my life has unfolded in a really beautiful way, and I think that it has a lot to do with the tools I've learned through Kabbalah, I really do."
Kabbalah is "an ancient wisdom" that focuses on "how to receive fulfillment" in one's life.
