Ariana Grande Will Break A 51 Year Old Oscars Record If She Wins Best Supporting Actress

Ariana Grande as Glinda from Wicked with an Oscar in front of her wand

An Oscar win for Wicked star Ariana Grande-Butera could be historic. Although she is best known as a pop star (using the name “Ariana Grande”), she began her career as an actor in projects like Nickelodeon’s Victorious and Sam & Kat. With 2024’s Wicked, she made her triumphant return to acting three years after an appearance in Netflix’s Don’t Look Up. In the Broadway musical adaptation, she plays the popular and seemingly shallow Glinda, who forms an unlikely friendship with Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), the future Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz.

Ariana Grande-Butera is a front-runner for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nod at the 2025 Oscar nominations, having been nominated in that category at many other major awards shows, including the BAFTA Awards, the Critics Choice Awards, the Golden Globes, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. So far, only the Golden Globe has been presented, with Zoe Saldaña winning for Emilia Pérez over Grande-Butera. However, there is still a strong chance that Grande-Butera could take home the Oscar, which would break a half-century-old record.

Ariana Grande Has One Of The Longest Screentimes Ever For A Best Supporting Actress Nominee

She Is In Nearly Half Of The Movie

Although Ariana Grande-Butera’s role in the Wicked cast can still be considered a supporting performance given Glinda’s place in the narrative and her relationship to the central character Elphaba, she is in the movie for an overwhelming majority of the two hour and 40 minute runtime. Overall, according to stats from Matthew Stewart on X, she appears in a total of 1 hour, 11 minutes, and 25 seconds of the movie, representing 44.59% of the total run time and giving her one of the longest screentimes ever for a Best Supporting Actress nominee.

Should Grande-Butera earn the nomination, she would have the second-longest screentime ever for a Best Supporting Actress contender at the Oscars, only falling behind Jennifer Jones in 1944’s Since You Went Away, a movie with a 2 hour and 57 minute run time in which Jones appears in roughly 1 hour, 15 minutes, and 38 seconds. While Grande-Butera’s compeтιтor Zoe Saldaña is another potential nominee with substantial screentime, and in fact has the longest screentime of any actor in Emilia Pérez, she does not threaten this record, as she only appears in 57 minutes and 50 seconds.

Ariana Grande Will Have The Most Screentime For Any Best Supporting Actress Oscar Winner

The Record Has Been In Place For More Than 50 Years

Galinda and Elphaba looking at themselves in the mirror, Galinda leaning on Elphaba, in Wicked

Should Ariana Grande-Butera win for her performance in the Wicked movie, she will clear an even bigger record as the Best Supporting Actress winner with the longest screentime in history. She would edge out Tatum O’Neal in 1973’s Paper Moon, who is currently No. 1 with a screentime of 1 hour, 6 minutes, and 38 seconds. However, O’Neal would still hold the record of appearing in the greatest percentage of her movie’s run time, as that screentime represents 65.49% of the movie’s 1 hour and 45 minutes.