Ethan Slater’s Ex-Wife, Lilly Jay, Responds To His Affair With Ariana Grande

Lilly Jay has spoken up about the sudden, very public end of her marriage to Ethan Slater, who is now in a relationship with Ariana Grande.

Slater acted alongside Grande as her hopeless suitor Boq in the blockbuster Wicked.

In an essay Jay wrote, published on Thursday by The Cut, she laments, “No one gets married thinking they’ll get divorced. But I really never thought I would get divorced. Especially not just after giving birth to my first child and especially not in the shadow of my husband’s new relationship with a celebrity.”

In her essay, Jay wrote, “I have come to believe that in the absence of the life I planned with my high school sweetheart, a lifetime of sweetness is waiting for me and my child.”

Jay, a clinical psychologist who specialized in perinatal mental health and child development, met Slater in high school before he became an actor. The two started dating in college in 2012 and were married in 2018. They welcomed their son in 2022.

Slater filed for divorce in 2023 as tabloids reported that he and Grande had a romantic affair while filming Wicked. Around the same time, Grande separated from her husband Dalton Gomez, to whom she’d been married for two years. Grande and Gomez finalized their divorce in March, and Slater and Jay finalized theirs in September.

Jay noted that the headlines have affected her work as a therapist: “Part of what I could offer to patients was the experience of being in relation with someone else without the complexities of a personal relationship…I was never meant to be fully known to them…[Slater] was on a different path, in which social media and exposure were not impediments but rather necessities.”

She articulated, “As someone who spent years researching how people respond to ambiguity…I hate not knowing if the way my story has been told has impacted my opportunity to help others sort through their stories.”

However, Jay reasoned, “If I can’t be invisible anymore, I may as well introduce myself.”

“You know how a sponge is most effective at absorbing liquid when it’s already a bit wet? Maybe we can think about my messy not-so-personal life in that way: a dose of my own loss, rage, powerlessness, sadness that helps me hold yours,” she wrote.