For goodness sake, she proves she’s a movie star

Madonna couldn’t do it. Neither can Justin Timberlake or Britney Spears. And yet, (apologies to my many, many fans) Harry Styles, Beyoncé or Taylor Swift.

With “Wicked: For Good”, Ariana Grande achieved the almost impossible. She proves that the first film was no fluke, and that she traveled the perilous path from pop icon to movie star.

Grande, who got her start as an actress on a Nickelodeon comedy series and who delights every time she appears on Saturday Night Live, is no stranger to acting. But there’s acting, and then there’s star power. As Glenda Upland, Grande does more than just hold her own opposite Cynthia Erivo, who entered the series already a Tony Award winner and former Oscar nominee for “Harriet.” It carries a lifetime of longing in a way that transforms Glinda from a would-be witch in a surreal landscape into a young woman anyone can relate to.

Erivo is also great in Wicked: For Good, but her talents as an actress were better known before those films came out, and the sequel is far less than her filmography. Grande may get a boost in the supporting races this awards season, but it’s her journey—from bleak acceptance of her role as a figurehead in the corrupt world of Oz to eager, renewed defiance—that gives the tale its structure and warmth.

The fact that the transition from pop star to screen star is a career transition that rarely gets nailed down makes sense; Recording artists who are accustomed to arena crowds there just to see them as the only star on stage can be tempted to choose projects that will be easy for them to accomplish, and that lack a certain quality of risk. (It’s not surprising that Madonna’s only unequivocal cinematic triumph was “Evita,” for which she had to retrain her voice, or that Cher won her Oscar only after she was stripped of all her glamour and turned into an out-of-town bookkeeper.) Once pop stars take on these roles, they tend to rely on easy, innate charisma rather than character building. (Justin Timberlake was superficial and simple in The Social Network, but other roles suggest this may be the only tone he can pull off as an actor.)

Glinda is a vocally challenging role with a tremendous emotional arc, and one that connects creatively with a beloved star. Conquering Glinda’s journey from arrogant to rebellious — and achieving escape velocity from Kristin Chenoweth’s allure — will be a formidable challenge, so much so that Grande discussed the challenge of convincing the “Wicked” cast of her vision. They needed an actress, the thinking went, not a pop star.

a surprise! They got the former. Grande holds the screen, and she and Erivo have prompted a million memes during two press tours. But — give or take the following “Meet the Parents” sequel — solid or pre-sold material like “Wicked” is rare. The idea that Grande might one day play Audrey Hepburn is being bandied about a lot online, and she would certainly work again, but this new actress’s next moves will prove whether she’s the one worth funding or simply the “evil” intellectual property. It will also indicate whether Hollywood still knows what to do with a charismatic budding star whose ambition is as great as her talent.

Say it often: Grande is committed. Her recent comments that her upcoming concert tour will be her “last hurrah” show just how much she gave of herself to performing Glenda – shedding any pop star swagger she may have had in order to construct a Glenda who worked for the screen, and in a political moment the film can be read as a speech. In her new single “The Girl in the Bubble,” written for the film, Grande sings about Glinda herself, and how it’s time for her to put her delusions and sense of herself as a star away in order to be part of a bigger movement. She doesn’t sound like the singer behind “God Is a Woman” or “Yes, and?” – She allows her voice to tremble, offering a quivering, delicate expression that she might never allow herself to express on the concert stage. “It’s time for her bubble to burst,” she sings — in other words, for Glenda to give up the amazing world she knew in order to embrace the risks and danger of the wider world beyond. One imagines that Grande, on the cusp of what would become a major movie star career, knew what Glenda meant.