Ariana Grande attends the 31st Annual Critics Choice Awards at Barker Hangar on January 04, 2026 in Santa Monica, California. Monica Schipper/Getty Images
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Ariana Grande is in Robert De Niro’s circle of trust.
De Niro had effusive praise for Ariana Grande during a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly regarding his time on set working with the pop star in the upcoming Focker-in-Law movie.
“I liked her, nice kid,” the actor began. “She was very professional. She’s terrific and very quick and got it all. She was very much part of the whole process.”
De Niro was previously familiar with Grande’s acting through his daughter, who was a big fan of Nickelodeon’s Victorious while growing up.
“I had seen her in some stuff with my daughter, some sitcom thing she had done. I’m forgetting the name,” he said. “My kid was into that. I was aware of her then and, of course, aware of her in other ways. She was great.”
The Academy Award winner still hasn’t seen Grande’s performance in Wicked, but plans to do so in the near future.
“I didn’t see her movie, and I still am trying to see it, believe it or not, but I want to see it,” he added. “I’m going to see it with my daughter. And she’s, of course, seen it.”
While a film’s cast is made up of actors coming from different disciplines and schools of thought, De Niro preached the importance of making sure everyone’s on the same page on set.
“It’s really so important that everybody sort of gets it and jumps in quick, and the timing and the give-and-take is there,” he said. “Everybody understands what we’re doing. It’s all very professional. It really helps.”
When Billboard interviewed De Niro last month, the actor joked of Grande: “She sings my character a lot of songs. No, she was great. Everybody was very happy she was going to do it.”
Focker-in-Law serves as the fourth installment of the Meet the Parents film series, as the original arrived in 2000. Focker-in-Law hits theaters on Nov. 25.
A trailer for the Universal blockbuster arrived in April, which found De Niro testing Ariana Grande (Olivia Jones) with his lie detector machine. Grande dates Ben Stiller’s (Gaylord Focker) son in the movie, who’s played by Skyler Gisondo. Stiller doesn’t trust Grande and he’s hesitant to let his son tie the knot with her.
Robert De Niro reprises his role as Jack Byrnes, and he seems to be a much bigger fan of Grande than he was of Stiller in the previous films from the series.
On the music side, Grande released her Petal lead single “Hate That I Made You Love Me” on May 29. Petal is set to arrive on July 31. The LP is Grande’s eighth and serves as the follow-up to Eternal Sunshine, which topped the Billboard 200 in 2024.
Watch the Focker-in-Law trailer below.