Frankie Grande says sister Ariana was key to sobriety after he 'vanished into drugs'

NEW YORK – Eleven years ago, Frankie Grande stood backstage at Broadway Bares, afraid to go onstage. He was slated to perform at the annual striptease fundraiser, but in the throes of his addiction, he was too high to go on. 

This year, Grande twirled onstage in a leather ribboned skirt and lace-up high-heel boots, doing the show for the first time sober. “I love my life,” he captioned a video from the event.

To the public, Grande has always been the glittery life of the party. He got his Broadway start in “Mamma Mia” and “Rock of Ages.” Almost every night, his sister Ariana Grande, then a pre-teen, met him at the stage door. She’d make her stage debut a year later in “Thirteen,” eventually catapulting her to Nickelodeon and pop music fame. When you look at the two of them, it’s hard not to see a charmed, glitzy life. 

But Grande says there’s more to the story, which he tells in full in “Supergay!” (out now from Sourcebooks). He stops to chat with USA TODAY between Pride events and his call time for “Titanique” on Broadway. He’ll sleep in July, he says. It’s worth it for this memoir, which shows him as a “three-dimensional character” at last.

“There (was) a time where I just completely vanished into drugs and alcohol and had to pretend to be happy and big and bright and gay. And it was not who I was. I was really in a dark place,” Grande says.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Question: “Supergay!” is a memoir, but it takes inspiration from your favorite sci-fi books and movies. How did you decide on that structure?

Grande: The answer is in my tattoos: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, Sleeping Beauty, Phoenix, Aliens. These are the things that I love more than anything in the whole wide world. And so when I sat down to tell my story, a huge part of who I am as a person is homosexual, alcoholic, addict, nerd. In order to make all those pieces come together, I just sat down and I was like, I don't want to write a traditional memoir. 

As a young queer kid, the only way that I found myself was in fantasy, was in sci-fi, was in escapism, was in comics, was in superhero stories.

Question: You’re a role model to many young people in the LGBTQ+ community. What do you want to say to them?

Grande: Our country is deeply polarized once again. You saw in the election, it's half red and it's half blue. In those places where it's red, LGBTQ+ people are being scapegoated and being villainized at an alarming rate, especially trans people. I want kids to read this book and see if he can be sparkly out loud, proud and queer, maybe I can too and maybe it'll be OK. Maybe the state that I'm living in right now is not a safe place for me to do that, but I can be that in my heart. And when I get to a place where it's accepted to be who I truly am, I will be able to shine bright like a Frankie and be “Supergay!”

Question: Introduce us to your superhero, “Supergay”

Grande: He's sitting in front of you. I am “Supergay!” This is the best anecdote I can tell: Someone came to me at the stage door the other night and was like, "I don't think your book should have been called ‘Supergay!’ I think it should have been called ‘Superhuman!’ because you are superhuman.” And I was like, “Thank you, but that's why it's called ‘Supergay!’”

Because there are places in this world still where people hear the word “Supergay” and think it's a bad thing, I needed to write this book.

“Supergay!” shows the world that it is a superpower to be gay. It is super powerful to be yourself. It is super powerful to be this tapped into your queerness and your sexuality. There are celebrities who are like, "Oh, why do I have to talk about my sexuality? It's the least interesting part about me." Girl, no, I'm not that. That is not me. I'm like, "Please, let's talk about my sexuality. It is the most interesting part about me.” It makes me who I am today, it colors every single action and interaction that I have in this world. It is all colored by the fact that I'm gay. So I want to be that for the world and I hope that it's going to push the tide of acceptance in the correct direction.

Question: When was the first time in your life you felt you could live authentically “Supergay”?

Grande: Broadway. Anytime I could be around Broadway people, I felt so loved and accepted.

Question: This memoir is also heavily about addiction and sobriety. Why was now the right time to tell that story?

Grande: It's funny because when I first got sober, I was 45 days clean and I got home and I started writing this book.

And my agent was like, "You're insane. Maybe put it away for five years. You've been sober for three minutes. You have nothing to teach anyone. There are no lessons that you know yet." And they were completely correct. 

At six years sober is when I was like, "OK, I'm finally ready to start telling this tale.” And it's been three years (since then) and now it's out in the world."

Question: What is a lesson that 45-days-sober Frankie would be surprised by?

Grande: That everything truly happens for a reason. I don't think I had the wherewithal to know that. I still think back then I thought that the world was conspiring against me and now I actually believe that the universe is conspiring in my favor, even the bad things, even the traumas that have happened in my life and the relationships that I destroyed that I have worked so hard to rebuild with my mother, with my sister. 

I’m so grateful my husband (Hale Leon Grande) never saw me drunk or high because I would've destroyed that relationship as well. The fact that we're here and everything has been repaired and is beautiful and wonderful, I wouldn't change any of that. If there was a magic spell that was like, "I will take away all that difficulty in your life and you would've had none of it," I would not accept that spell. I would say, "No, you keep that. Thank you so much." Because I needed to have those trials and tribulations to grow from.

Question: A pivotal moment in your sobriety was after the bombing at Ariana’s show in Manchester. Can you tell me about that?

Grande: The bombing at the Manchester arena with my sister's show was such a scary and dark time for my whole family. I was on the other side of the world. I was in New York and they were over there and there was a period of time, minutes, where I thought that they were dead. And in that period of time, the only thing that I could think to do was call my friend and say, "Get as much drugs as you possibly can get ahold of." That was my only coping mechanism for that level of fear and sadness was drugs. And that didn't wake me up. That wasn't the wake-up call. I did use drugs tremendously that night and then fly to be with my family. And then during a planning session, I was so pilled out that I couldn't even help. And in that moment, I realized I'd need help.

Question: Your sister was a big part of that push to go to rehab, right?

Grande: Immediately, I said, "I need help." She said, "I have just the place." I owe so much of my recovery to her. Now at this stage, especially after the book, my mother has really come around to my recovery in a huge way where she wants to be an active part of it. 

We never had a lot of conversations about the things that are in this book. So I handed her the book and I was like, "Have fun. There's a bunch of stuff in there that you don't know and it's hopefully going to lead to some really challenging conversations." And it did.

Question: Did that feel scary?

Grande: Terrifying. I was terrified to give my mother the book. Oh my God, I was terrified. My sister, not so terrified. 

Question: What is your relationship like with Ariana? Have you gotten closer as you’ve gotten older?

Grande: We're closer now than ever. So we definitely got closer as we got older, but I will say we were always close. It's just the drinking and the using pull us apart. It was just like it happened to coincide with her being 14 and me being 24 and she’s at this very important developmental stage of her life and that's when I disappeared. So it was a very tough time to be a self-obsessed alcoholic and addict, for her and I know that. 

So again, no regrets, but it does hurt to talk about that. I do still feel like “You're a piece of s--- for doing that.” However, the thing is that I have gotten sober and we've spoken about it, we've repaired our relationship and there is no more shame or guilt over that. 

I have to give myself grace because I didn't know better. I was caught in my disease. Alcoholism and addiction is a disease. It's a mental health disease. There's no cure, there is treatment and I didn't know about the treatment. I had no ability to fight the disease. It had such a grip on me. Now that I know that, I can give myself grace for those times I was absent and it's very freeing from this side.

Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at [email protected].