Ariana Grande has been around for 28 years, and for most of them, she’s been pursuing a career in entertainment. She was in the Broadway musical 13 as a teenager and landed a role in the Nickelodeon series Victorious not long after that. Her roots go even deeper than that, though, as was shown on The Tonight Show yesterday when Jimmy Fallon surprised Grande with video of her first ever singing gig.
Fallon explained that Grande’s first gig was singing the national anthem at a Florida Panthers game when she was 8 and that, thanks to Grande’s mother Joan, he had footage of that performance to show. “Oh my gosh, are we going here,” Grande asked as Fallon set up the clip. The video shows a fresh-faced Grande singing the last few lines of the song, absolutely belting it out before ending the song and letting a big smile spread across her face.
Grande was looking for her shot at fame even years before that. The singing clip was preceded by Grande telling a story about how she called Nickelodeon when she was just four years old. She managed to get through to Universal Studios and expressed her interest in auditioning for All That or The Amanda Show. While that call didn’t end up being fruitful, Grande, as aforementioned, went on to become one of the network’s big stars.
Check out clips from Grande’s Tonight Show interview above and below.