Frankie by Ariana Grande:
A Fragrance That Defies Gender Norms
Frankie Grande is a dazzling and vivacious Broadway sensation, singer, actor, dancer, producer, philanthropist and now fragrance mogul. Grande is in the midst of launching a glittering new scent, FRANKIE by Ariana Grande.
One of the most enchanting and explosive personalities on the scene today, Grande is inundated with more credits than this feature has the space to present. He is best celebrated for his Broadway portrayal of Franz in “Rock of Ages” and in the Broadway musical “Mamma Mia!” His television appearances include being a judge on “America’s Best Dance Crew,” a contestant on “Big Brother” and the host of the TV special “Worst. Post. Ever. With Frankie Grande.”
Grande also mastered his own one-man show, “Livin’ La Vida Grande,” and produced numerous off-Broadway productions. He also co-hosted the red carpet event of the “American Music Awards” and was nominated for a 2016 “People’s Choice Award.”
Featured in an ABC “Nightline” segment showcasing entertainers who use social media to help their careers, Grande has established an astounding array of followers on many social media channels, including his own self-created YouTube channel.
However, there is so much more to Frankie Grande the just Hollywood and his titanic personality. He has heart, as he co-founded a non-profit arts organization dubbed Broadway in South Africa, where he taught disadvantaged youth the art of performing for seven years. He also built schools in rural Malawi. For this he was honored with a Global Impact Award.
I was introduced to Frankie at a benefit for the transgender community hosted by Sir Ivan, where he appeared as a guest. Immediately I was touched by his warmth and unaffected attitude, as well as his fervent passion for being alive. Get Out! was extremely fortunate to have the occasion to speak with Frankie about his majestic career, Justin Bieber, Madonna, Ariana, as well as his new fragrance, which I suspect will be even bigger than he expects.
I had no idea that you were so Broadway!
Oh, yeah. Broadway is my background. I was a biology, musical theatre triple major in college, and then bio was a huge passion of mine. Then I was going to give myself some time to pursue this musical theatre thing. Within months of graduating I was Boots the monkey in “Dora the Explorer Live,” so I took my equity card right away. Everyone said, “Don’t do it, you’ll never work again,” then six months after that I was in “Mamma Mia!” on Broadway. Then of course I got to do “Rock of Ages” on Broadway, which was magical. What an honor. It was crazy!
I just had no idea. When I met you, I just thought you were a little dancing kid.
I’m a little kid at heart. I see the world through the eyes of a little kid, put it that way. I really do. Everything is so shiny and sparkly.
That’s the best way to live life. Life might as well glitter.
I absolutely love that. Shine bright like a Frankie!
Exactly! I loved your Justin Bieber song, too. I laughed for an hour after seeing the video.
I’m a Belieber.
My four-year-old grandson loves Justin Bieber.
OMG, now everyone on the planet loves Justin.
They went from hating him to loving him in one breath.
He’s having quite a resurgence. I was a Belieber before this album…thank you very much! I was there first.
Yes, you were.
I’m not one of these new Beliebers, OK. I’m an original.
You certainly were. So now you have this new fragrance coming out.
Yes I do, and it’s so fantastic! I love it so much. It smells so beautiful and looks so beautiful. I love it. I’m really obsessed with it.
I wanna wear it.
I would like you to wear it.
What is the name of it?
It’s called FRANKIE by Ariana Grande.
What does it look like?
It’s very sci-fi, which I love. It’s very shiny, which is all me, and it looks like the Epcot ball, which is my favorite national monument. I was obsessed with the Epcot ball as a child. It’s my favorite theme park to this day. No one likes Epcot; it’s everyone’s least favorite. It’s my favorite. It’s so sciencey, and I’m a science geek. My fragrance bottle reminds me of that, and I think that that’s what gives me so much joy. I love the black puff that it comes with, because that’s the perfect harmony between masculine and feminine. It’s so for everyone.
Is it out already?
What happened is we did a soft launch on Friday on ultra.com, demand was so high it went on backorder after just one tweet. Frankie is now available on ulta.com, Macys.com, lordandtaylor.com, and in select stores – Stage Stores in the US and Shoppers Drug Mart in Canada, but it’s just doing so well already, there might be a long-term plan that we might have to implement. It’s already doing well, and no one smelled it. People are just buying it without even smelling it. Once they smell it, it’s going to be even better.
What made you decide to do this, to create your own fragrance?
What made me do it was Ari. I was there when Ari was making Ari for the first time. So I have a bio major; I have a background in the sciences. I had a love affair with biochemistry and organic chemistry in college. When I was in the laboratory, “I just want to do this,” I thought. I thought it was so cool, and I was just so passionate about her scent. I fell in love with her scent. I wore it every single day. Going from not wearing anything, mind you. I haven’t worn a cologne since I was l0, daily. I started wearing Ari daily. I wanted to do this, so then Ari and I decided to work on one together. This is our baby, FRANKIE.
By the way I also was a bio major.
Are you geek?
Probably a wannabe geek.
I think it’s a good thing. I fully embrace my dorky status. I mean, I’ve got “Lord of the Rings” tattoos, Harry Potter tattoos, Rainbow Brite tattoos. I’m a geek.
Rainbow Brite?
I have a Rainbow Brite tattoo on my shoulder.
Really?
You can find pictures of it on my Instagram. I have the color belt on my left shoulder, and I feel like it’s me. My job is to bring color to places that are gray, black and white.
And you do. You walk into a room and all of a sudden it explodes with color, just like Sir Ivan’s walls.
OMG, he’s so funny. His blacklight neon walls. My tattoo glowed there, because I have a Harry Potter tattoo that you can only see in blacklight. So I think I spent most of the night showing people my tattoo.
How was it done in blacklight?
It’s just blacklight ink. So my Harry Potter tattoo says “I solemnly swear…,” and in blacklight it says “…that I am up to no good,” so only when I’m in a club can you see it. It’s so funny. It’s very clever that I can do that.
I love that. Now besides your fragrance, what else are you up to?
I’m working very hard. I have several TV projects that I’m working on at the moment, which are going to be unbelievable. It’s very, very exciting. One has been shopped already to networks. I’ll be doing two episodes of “Ru Rules,” which is like a dream come true. I love RuPaul. It’s been one of my life goals to work with her, so the fact that it’s happening this week is crazy. I have no idea when it airs; you know Logo takes their time with that. It might not be on till 2020, but I’m shooting it this week, and that’s awesome.
What exactly is it that you will be doing on “Ru”?
I don’t know. I’ll find out. The way I work is I am just always me. So I just show up to things, and then just be Frankie, in every situation. I don’t like when it’s too much prep work. I just know when it’s happening. I love the element of surprise, because it’s natural. I pretty much can exist in any situation. I discovered that in my life, so there is really no reason for me to do too much prep. I just like to be off-the-cuff. I’m an off-the-cuff kind of guy.
That’s a good way to be sometimes.
It’s natural. That’s how all of this personality doesn’t feel forced, because it isn’t.
And you are full of personality!
I’m full of it! Brimming with it!
What is your most favorite thing in life that you have ever done?
Wow, that is a huge window. Definitely being Franz in the closing night of “Rock of Ages” on Broadway was by far one of the most incredible experiences in my life, because I was at the opening watching Wesley Taylor playing Franz and thinking, “I wanna do that one day.” I felt like this was the greatest show, and I wanted to play Franz so bad, and then to be the final person to play that role that I wanted to play my entire adult life was so surreal. Our little two-hour show took 3 1/2 hours to complete, because the audience was so crazy that night. That’s a moment I will absolutely never forget. Winning the Zingbot competition on “Big Brother” and having Kathy Griffin put the Veto around my neck was unbelievable. Meeting Madonna and telling her that I built two schools in Malawi for her organization, and watching her face light up. There’s a few moments in my life that will be etched in my heart forever. Also, I think seeing my sister in Madison Square Garden was the greatest moment. “That’s my sister!” Like, what the hell. Nuts, just nuts! That’s all in the past year by the way.
That’s amazing!
It’s been a pretty epic year and a half for me.
Sounds fabulous. Getting back to the fragrance thing, that’s pretty fabulous too.
Yes, it’s also really important for me, because part of Ariana and my purpose in this existence is to negate hetero-normativity, and defy gender norms, and to educate the world about the fact that not everything has to be for a boy or for a girl, there are things that can be for whomever. That very much was in the realm for me with this fragrance, for it to be for whomever chooses to wear it. That’s who it’s for. I don’t think that things should be for men or women; I think that they should be for people, and people should choose what is for them.
I absolutely agree.
I mean, the amount of things that I wore one in my life that were intended for women, I can’t even tell you.
Oh honey, I can just imagine!
Yes, exactly. It’s enough with this, let’s start doing what we’re supposed to be doing, just making things for humans. Let the humans decide if it’s for them.
So you’re a new addition to a crayon box. What color you?
Rainbow Sparkle. So it’s a rainbow crayon with glitter inside. They don’t have one yet. I need an exclusive, Crayola. I need it now! I’m putting it out there.
When you want to do a project, do you think about it first? Do you secret it? Do you practice “The Secret”?
I’m very “The Secret,” but not specifically with the project. I secret happiness and joy and fulfillment, and the project appears. It’s not like I wanna do a TV show, so I’m going to secret the TV. It’s more like I secret the state of mind that I want to be in, happy in all aspects of my life, and then the right opportunity presents itself. I’m always in a state of openness and gratitude. Otherwise I become fixated on something, and if it doesn’t happen then I’m disappointed. That is not the way I like to live my life. I’d rather be open to whatever it is that the universe has intended for me, and the next state of receiving.
Have you always been like that?
No, it’s kind of a recent thing that started to happen with the death of my grandfather. I started to realize that I needed to do some work in order to be able to handle these kinds of life-altering events. I’ve been a Kabbalist my whole life. I just got back into that recently. I’m spending every week with my Kabbalah teacher, and I’m meditating and hiking and SCUBA diving and really reconnecting with the earth and nature. That has been what has gotten me to this state. So again, this past year and a half I’ve had all this kind of growth and stuff. It’s in honor of my grandfather. Now I am the patriarch of the family, which is a huge responsibility. Also, I know it’s what he wanted, for me to find this level of peace and success. And I’m glad that he also, before he passed, got to see me doing it on “Big Brother.” He was watching me win all these competitions before he died.
I feel like you have a really close family.
We have the closest family on the planet. A success for me is a success for mommy, a success for Ari, and vice versa. We are all so proud and happy for each other.
That’s so sweet. Now what advice would you give the younger Frankie?
I would say to care less about other people’s opinions earlier. I found that I’ve gotten to that point where I give zero fucks about other people’s opinions, but it took a while. I would’ve loved to have known that was an option much earlier in my life.
What kind of dogs do you have that are barking in the background?
Those are our rescues. Ariana loves rescuing dogs. That was Straus, our most recent rescue who was sick, sick, sick, and we nursed him back to health. Now he’s completely healthy, and he’s staying with us forever. Then of course there is Toulouse, the face of Coach, the most famous dog on the planet. We just dropped my perfume bottle from about six feet, and it’s perfectly undamaged. It is very durable. We just did the crash test, and it passed. All the safety ratings are A-plus.
There is only one size for this particular limited edition. It is 1.7 fluid ounces, or 50 milliliters.
Nice. Being into biology, did you help create the actual fragrance?
Since I’m not a biochemist I wasn’t actually in the lab mixing, but I was in the lab smelling each and every ingredient, and I was giving feedback to the creator. He took the things that I was drawn to, the things that I liked most about Ari, and then took that information, and then went away and came back and said, “Is this it?” I said, “Yep!” Believe me, I would have loved to have been the actual person in the laboratory doing the whole thing. That would’ve been my dream come true. Hey, maybe for the next one.
Is there anything else you wish to say that I haven’t covered or asked you?
Follow me on all of my socials: FrankieJGrande on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Then you will be up to date, to the second, on what’s going on in my life. I am very, very active on all of those platforms. See you at the next event!
