Ariana Grande can handle a good impression of her. However, what she won’t stand for is people impersonating her by using qualities of her character from Victorious, Cat Valentine. In a now-deleted Instagram post, Ariana expressed her frustration at people combining her real-life traits with that of her character’s when doing impressions of her on TikTok. The concept of TikTok users “recontextualizing” an artist’s work was brought up by filmmaker, Jordan Firstman, and Ariana re-posted his message about it to share her own feelings on the situation.
“Can this also double as your impression of the ponytail TikTok girls who think doing the Cat Valentine voice and wearing winged eyeliner and a sweatshirts is doing a good impersonation of me,” Ariana wrote. “Cause this really how it feels.” She concluded her message by sharing a quote from Jordan’s video where he explained that combining a person’s real traits with that of a character they once portrayed is “degrading its entire value.”
This is not the first time that Ariana has clapped back at her impersonators. Back in November, she responded to a tweet that included a video of someone dressing up as her and doing an Ariana impression. The resemblance was uncanny, but Ariana could not get behind the context of the video. “I just wonder whyyyy the Cat [Valentine] voice/dialogue,” she wrote. “I am sure she is the sweetest sweet sweetheart forreal!! But it’s definitely bizarre seeing people blend the two worlds.”
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Ariana played Cat on the hit Nickelodeon series from 2010 until 2013. Of course, since then, her singing career has massively taken off, and she’s become so much more than her character on the show — so we don’t blame her for wanting to separate the two parts of her life!