Ariana Grande has truly blossomed from her first appearance as Cat Valentine on the Nickelodeon show Victorious to the superstar that she is now. Every day it seems like Grande has another exciting new project on the horizon. After all, Grande hosted the Total Request Live revival, although it was one day only, and released "Bang Bang" with Jessie J and Nicki Minaj at midnight on Tuesday, not to mention the fact that she has a new album coming out.
If ever there was a perfect candidate for the cover of Seventeen magazine, it's Ariana Grande. That's why it comes as no surprise that Ariana Grande is the Seventeen cover girl for September 2014. No, the real surprise is what Grande opened up about during her interview. Apparently, Grande and her father have been estranged since last year and that's even more tragic now than it sounds.
"It's private, but it happened last year," said Grande in the Seventeen magazine interview. "It took me so long to be okay with it. The thing that got me there was embracing the fact that that I am made up of half my dad, and a lot of my traits come from him. So much of me comes from my father, and for so long, I didn't like that about myself... I had to accept that it's okay not to get along with somebody and still love them."
There are no more details than that, at least not until Seventeen's next issue comes out on August 5, but that's more than enough to take her fans by surprise. If there's one thing that Ariana Grande is known for, it's how close she is with her family. She and her mother, Joan Grande, live tweet episodes of Big Brother together. She has been running her own Twitter and her half-brother Frankie Grande's Twitter during his absence while he's in the Big Brother house. She spends whatever free time she has with her grandfather, Frank, and her grandmother, Nonna.
Grande's grandfather passed away recently and the tragedy is still something she is trying to deal with considering how close they were. However, the family issues she revealed in this Seventeen issue cast a new light on her closeness with her grandfather. If Grande didn't have a close relationship with her father, then it seems obvious now that her grandfather was more than just her grandfather or her best friend. He was a father figure to her, in the past year especially, and to have lost him is a blow on just about every level now.
According to E! Online, Grande issued a statement about the cover interview that states: "This interview took place before I lost my grandfather. Reading it back now is, of course, very hard but I'm so grateful that I spoke briefly about some of the wisdom he shared with me in this interview. I hope the Seventeen readers find it helpful and can relate."
At the time of the interview, Grande identified her grandfather as very important to her, above her fame or her fans or her career, and come August 5 I'm sure that we'll all be crying as we read over the comments she made about him before she lost him. The thing is that while we could all tell that Grande's grandfather was very important to her, it feels like we're learning with each passing day exactly how important he was to her.
We might never know the whole story behind what happened between Ariana Grande and her father, but we can see a father-daughter relationship reflected between herself and Frank Grande. And it's good, at least, to know that someone was looking out for her on that level through what was clearly a hard time in her life.
