Her comments initially raised a few eyebrows.
Ariana Grande had people speculating about her looks after crediting her “good friends Botox and Juvederm” for her youthful appearance while accepting the Rising Star Award at the 2025 Palm Springs Film Festival Film Awards—but no need to worry, it was just a joke.
During her speech, the pop star revealed she was shocked to be referred to as a "rising star" at 31 years old. “You don’t know how much it means to me,” she told the audience. “I’ve been performing since I was a child, so I never thought at the age of 31 I would be hearing the words ‘rising star’ again, so I wanted to start by thanking my two friends: Botox and Juvederm.”
She added, “I thought I’d be hearing ‘slightly withering star’ or ‘drooping star’ by now so thank you.”
After the award ceremony, Grande was asked about her on-stage comments by Entertainment Tonight. Clarifying that she was only joking, the singer replied: “Oh, my joke! My bit. I’m still clean, I’m still clean, but when I start going [for injections] again I’ll let you know.”
“I mean it. I really wanna be transparent as a beauty founder,” the actress continued. “As a founder of r.e.m. beauty I think it’s important to have transparency…But I love it and I support it. But I am four years clean. You see the lines? I love them.”
Grande previously noted that she stopped getting both Botox and lip fillers in 2018. “Over the years, I used makeup as a disguise or something to hide behind with more and more hair and more thicker eyeliner—that can be so beautiful at times and I still do have love for it and appreciation for it,” she explained during a September 2023 interview with Vogue. “But I think as I get older, I don’t love that being the intention behind it anymore.”
And while her beauty mantra used to be about "hiding," Grande shared that she's now ready to embrace the aging process full-on. “I want to see my well-earned cry lines and smile lines,” she said. “I hope my smile lines get deeper and deeper and I laugh more and more and I just think aging can be such a beautiful thing.”