If you thought Justin Long digging his own grave in the music video for “Hate That I Made You Love Me” was intense, wait until you see Ariana Grande’s latest visual for Petal’s title track. Once again directed by Christian Breslauer, the seven-minute short film opens with a parental advisory warning before Grande makes her appearance as a bright-eyed aspiring actress named Pepper. After several failed auditions, things take a bloody turn when a shadowy producer accuses Grande’s character of being “inauthentic.” She then gives a performance truly worthy of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Watch it all go down below.
Petal is co-written and executive produced by Grande and Ilya, who she worked with on her 2014 hit “Problem.” In a press release, she described the album as “something that is full of life and growing through the cracks of something cold and hard and challenging.”
Grande is currently on tour for the first time in nearly seven years. Given how much time has passed, this massive headlining run is in support of her pandemic-era album Positions, the Wicked-era record Eternal Sunshine, and now potentially a bit of Petal, too. Once she wraps that up with a multi-night residency in London, Grande can focus on tracking down those hackers who keep leaking her music and private photos to sue them.
Read the new review of Petal.