Lilly Jay is opening up about the “sudden public downfall” of her marriage to Ethan Slater, the Wicked actor who is currently dating his world-famous costar Ariana Grande.
In an essay published by the Cut on Thursday, Jay writes, “No one gets married thinking they’ll get divorced. But I really never thought I would get divorced. Especially not just after giving birth to my first child and especially not in the shadow of my husband’s new relationship with a celebrity.”
Jay, a clinical psychologist specializing in perinatal mental health and child development, and Slater, a Tony-nominated actor known for playing the title role in SpongeBob SquarePants on Broadway, started dating in college in 2012, having known each other since high school. They married in 2018 and welcomed a son in 2022.
In 2023, however, Slater filed for divorce amid reports that he and Grande had embarked on a romantic relationship while filming Wicked together. Grande, the actress and chart-topping singer, had reportedly separated from her husband of two years, Dalton Gomez. Speaking to Page Six at the time, Jay said, “[Grande is] the story, really. Not a girl’s girl.” She added, “My family is just collateral damage.”
Grande and Gomez finalized their divorce this past March, while Slater and Jay finalized their divorce in September.
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In her essay for the Cut, Jay does not name or express bitterness toward Grande or Slater. “I have come to believe that in the absence of the life I planned with my high-school sweetheart, a lifetime of sweetness is waiting for me and my child,” she writes. “While our partnership has changed, our parenthood has not. Both of us fiercely love our son 100 percent of the time, regardless of how our parenting time is divided.”
While she shares that “days with my son are sunny,” she admits that “days when I can’t escape the promotion of a movie associated with the saddest days of my life are darker.”
Ethan Slater and Lilly Jay in 2018. Mark Sagliocco/WireImage
Representatives for Slater didn’t immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly‘s request for comment on Jay’s essay. A representative for Grande declined to comment.
Jay also discusses how her personal life has bled into her work. “As a therapist, part of what I could offer my patients was the experience of being in relation with someone else without the complexities of a personal relationship… I was never meant to be fully known to them.” Slater, meanwhile, “was on a different path, in which social media and exposure were not impediments but rather necessities.”
For Jay, becoming something of a public figure has brought considerable challenges. “As someone who spent years researching how people respond to ambiguity,” she writes, “I hate not knowing if the way my story has been told has impacted my opportunity to help others sort through their stories.”
But she remains optimistic, saying “the publicity I did not consent to increasingly feels like both a challenge and an opportunity.” Jay feels that her recent romantic and maternal turbulence “could be a point of connection rather than a clinical liability.”
