#ozgate

[notasimpleslater]

Hey y'all! I just saw this on twitter. Apparently PageSix took back a lot of what they initially said about Ethan and Ari, and posted this:

I'm gonna try to find the full article and post it here.

[notasimpleslater]

Sorry to briefly return to Ozgate, but what the hell??

"They were hoping to keep it a secret and go back to their marriages as if nothing has happened"

"Now they are stuck together and have really nothing in common with each other"

If this is at all true, I fail to see how they're "stuck" together. No one is forcing them to live together. And what happened to the "they have a lot in common and have a lot of fun together" story from 2 months ago?

How would they have been able to return to their marriages as if nothing had happened if Ari has apparently been separated from Dalton since January, and Lilly apparently found out about the affair? Is the only reason they're getting divorced because it went public?

The math isn't mathing.

what's this?!

[reallyhardy]

Sorry what’s up w the Ethan slater stuff? I know him only from your posts / SpongeBob stuff

HI HELLO please buckle in

yep -- the same guy from the spongebob musical, and my posts abut the spongebob musical.

he blew up completely and now the general public knows him as 'ariana grande's new boyfriend' - their relationship seems to have started off the back of co-starring in the upcoming wicked musical film adaptation.

it's just been like. a monkey's paw curling sort of a way for him to get catapulted to fame, as i had always really enjoyed him as a performer (as spongebob, yes, but also in the other roles i'd seen him in,) and my biggest hope back around 2017 was that he would continue in and be really successful in theatre, get a lot of broadway roles, maybe take on some existing parts i thought he'd really suit, like seymour in little shop or ogie in waitress.......... but instead he booked the role of boq from wicked in a massive hollywood film production instead, where he met ariana grande. THE ariana grande.

and then yeah. at some point, he and grande broke up with their respective partners, (slater leaving both his wife AND newborn son) jumped into a new relationship, and now the whole wider internet knows who he is but certainly not for the right reasons.

there's been speculation regarding whether or not grande and slater had cheated on their previous partners before their relationship began with various sources coming out of the woodwork saying "yes they did" and others saying "no they didn't" -- humans are all perfectly capable of making stuff up, the media especially, so i simply don't know who to trust and i admit it had completely shattered my whole good impression of him - PLUS it gave the wider internet an absolutely awful first impression of him, resulting in, yeah, the (frankly, unflattering, sometimes downright cruel) memes of him popping up on twitter and, as i discovered yesterday, in non-theatre youtubers' videos who would literally never have heard of him if not for the slater-grande romance 🥲

FULL COVERAGE of the situation as it was happening can all be found on the lovely @notasimpleslater's blog under the tag 'ozgate' if you want to delve deeper!

[starfleetwitch]

Listen… I’m not saying I spent my lunch hour drawing Osgate instead of catching up on work… but I may have to go to work early tomorrow 😅

[4x4community]

OZGate or similar in South Africa?

http://dlvr.it/Rbb5wv

[pekmurat]

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[sl0nderman]

[notasimpleslater]

A new "theory" about Ethan I'm seeing on TikTok is that Ethan (because he's dating Ariana who allegedly has the addiction already) is now a drug addict and is using cocaine. One of the points being because of how tired he looks, which… c'mon. I have mixed feelings about the man, but he has been juggling A LOT these past few months. From filming his first major film and then doing reshoots, doing a Broadway show, an ongoing divorce/ whatever personal life situations are going on around that, dating a major A lister, and having basically no privacy anymore because of dating said A lister. Additionally, from what I see online, he's basically become the joke in the couple. Since most people just refer to him as "SpongeBob" and not by his actual name. I don't know what he is or is not doing to manage this workload (people have other "theories" as to why he looks the way he does), but I'd look super tired myself without the need of anything "extra" to help manage the day.

They think he's a drug addict because he looks tired??? jgkgfgd I can't 💀. He honestly doesn't look any different to me than he did 6 years ago (except for his hair maybe).

Like if you look at pics from when he was in SBTM he looked just as tired (or even more so considering the fact that he was the lead). And I completely agree that he's probably had a lot on his plate lately. Depending on how their custody agreement worked out, he probably has Ezra half the time.

I also wanted to note that as I'm typing this, Ethan is trending on twitter and I'm scared to find out why 🥲.

[notasimpleslater]

I believe Ethan outgrew his relationship with his wife. When you start to date so young and you get married after you have your big break as an actor it can be difficult to have a stable relationship. That journalist was right when he told him that he was a bit on the early side as an actor to be engaged during the Spongebob run. A lot of things can change and he had a lot of busy years with work and traveling all over the place. But if you look at him now you can see that he's not that same as he was during the spongebob era, he was like a kid in a candy store back then, now he's more mature and I think something wasn't right for a bit and he didn't take this decision lightly. He's someone that knows what he wants and who he is. Jonathan Bennett said in his last interview that Ethan is a steady rock and very grounding to be around. Anyway this year is gonna be big, he has 3 movie coming out and I hope some other big show! I can't wait to see him in Wicked!

Btw a few weeks ago his kid was with him backstage at Spamalot (he had him in his arms), so he brings him to work! Maybe he's going to be a little Toto too in the future!

I totally agree with this,, anon. There's one anon on there that sent messages about this thought during ozgate, and we agreed that it may be the best case scenario. You're right that he's grown and matured since SBTM era (even Chicago!SBTM era), so maybe he realized he jumped to marriage too fast? Anyway, I'm currently counting down the days until Wicked comes out (I'm also excited for the two other movies he's in)!!

Aww, did he really? Are there pics? I've been caught up in other fandoms lately that I haven't exactly been keeping up with the goings on at Spamalot 😅

[notasimpleslater]

Although, I will say this: IF Ethan is in a relationship with someone who has a coke addiction, even someone as big as Ariana, does that make him an enabler? She seems to have only gotten physically worse since being with him, I can't see him stepping into that situation to try and help... I just hope he doesn't bring it around his son, is all I mean. And if that's the case, kinda disappointing that he'd be involved with all that, but I guess we can't really be surprised atp.

Idk I haven't really been paying attention to her much lately so imo she looks the same as she had a year ago, but if this is true, I don't see him being involved (but what do I know?).

[notasimpleslater]

Yeah IDK about the coke theory... Do I think Ariana is doing coke rn? Probably, just like most of Hollywood is. IK we're not here to talk about her but that woman is unwell and there are rumors that she's been back on coke for a long time. However, automatically looping Ethan into that because he looks 'tired' is a bit of a stretch for me. Like, that man is EURPOEAN WHITE. I can personally confirm that we all look tired most of the time for the sole reason that we're pale as fuck, that's just -

- how we look; I can't imagine the personal and professional stresses Ethan is facing is helping that, and tbh I kinda commend him for not giving into societal shittalking about his appearance (though how much of it he's actually seeing is up for debate, he seems pleased as punch recently so I doubt he's ingesting too much of it).

(Also, I know this isn't really the place for this, but since you put in in the tags of your Wicked trailer post I'll say it to you because I can't say it anywhere else online without everyone and their mother going "YEAH BUT ARIANA GRANDE THOUGH"- Marissa looks really gorgeous as Nessarose! I actually have some friends who went to school with ther in NY and they say she's as sweet as can be, so I'm thrilled to see her as my fav character and yeah I just can't believe how pretty she looks.)

1-2. True! He's sooo pale sometimes, that's just how he's always looked (especially this time of year). If ANYTHING I think he may have dabbled in 🍃 in the past just based on some things I've heard him say in interviews, but that's beside the point. People really spend too much time talking about his looks. As for if I think he sees any of it, that's hard to say. Most of it happens on twitter, and he hasn't posted anything on twitter/liked any posts since last spring (tbh I'm surprised he hasn't deleted his twitter yet).

3. YES omg! I can't wait to see Marissa's Nessarose! And her and Ethan look like they're a good pair for those roles. I don't see enough people talking about how big of a deal Marissa playing Nessa is as she's the first disabled actress to play the role.

[notasimpleslater]

(also if you ask me, even the 'they were separated for 2 months' timeline is slimy- you spend 10 years with someone, have a baby with them, and then while you're across the ocean working on a movie you split up and almost immediately jump into bed with someone else and then start living together?)

Idk. This may be an unpopular opinion, but if Ethan and Lilly being separated for 2 months is true, then Ethan and Ari did nothing wrong morally. We may have mixed feelings about them being together but if they did nothing wrong, they did nothing wrong.

Based on the interactions I've had with y'all since July, many of you agree with my theory that there was definitely something going wrong behind the scenes of their relationship leading up to this. They may both have been emotionally checked out of their relationship longer than we think, and just stayed together for Ezra. For all we know, Ethan could also be mourning the loss of their relationship (this is someone he's known since he was a child, after all).

The point is that we really don't know anything. I stopped believing anything the tabloids (especially Page Six) say because they're pretty much rage baiting at this point (this includes Lilly's "statement" because other articles have claimed that she denies ever saying that).

Sorry if this seemed aggressive, but I'm so tired of this narrative.

[notasimpleslater]

i'll FINALLY leave you with this- i think we can all agree that lilly was styling ethan before. either that, or ariana reeeaaalllllyyyyy likes that oversized gray sweater of his. XD

I just wanted to answer this one because it made me laugh jgdkgng!

I can definitely agree with that 😂. To be fair most of the pics we've gotten of him since September have been either rehearsal pics or pics of him in costume, and we haven't gotten those fun candid pics of him with friends in a good long time (RIP Sponge Squad). He could still be wearing his stylish lil outfits around Ariana and we just haven't seen them 🤷‍♀️

[notasimpleslater]

thanks for answering! i'm so glad i'm not the only one who's had thoughts stewing the past few months because i've had sooooooo many, especially now that i'm caught up lmao. do you think it's at all possible that lilly and ethan were on the rocks/potentially separated and planning to divorce by the time she found out she was pregnant, hence the no post? maybe a reach but idk. and then when they found out she was pregnant they tried to stay together for the baby?

That's a good question. Ethan did a bunch of interviews during EOTW era (which coincidentally was happening at the same time as all the traveling they were doing), and I remember he mentioned in a couple of the interviews that the last few months had been "hard". So it's definitely possible. But at the same time, in spring 2022 he did an interview where he talked for a whole 5 minutes about their relationship and how well it works, so like 🤷‍♀️ (of course he could've just done that to not raise suspicion, but still).

I think it's just as likely something could've happened during his social media hiatus in 2022 where he literally posted nothing for 6 months. Which was the time he would've been preparing not only for Ezra to be born, but also preparing to go to London for Wicked.

[notasimpleslater]

also, to your point about his feed seeming different; i agree that he probably hasn't handed his socials over to a PR person but he's for SURE copying ariana's style of posting; or she's just straight up posting for him. if you look at their posts, they're almost exactly the same in terms of style. not to mention that one picture he posted on him half in costume while facetiming someone... he was facetiming ariana and everyone knows it, he wanted to show it off without actually doing so.

shit, one last thing i promise but i just remembered this- IIRC ethan didn't make an anniversary post for lilly in nov.2021. when the pregnancy announcement happened the next year i thought they were just keeping extra private to enjoy finding out they were pregnant, but then they said they found out about the pregnancy in DECEMBER of 2021... idk something about that hit a litte weird and i feel like somehow that fits into this whole mess. somehow.

OMG, first of all thank you for all those messages anon! It's been months since I've gotten any ozgate anons, and I've been having Thoughts™ now that Wicked is picking up where they left off with filming this month. Second, I'm just gonna focus on these two messages since these are both good points I wanted to talk about.

I definitely noticed that when he started posting caption-less (or very short captioned) photo dumps. He's for sure copying Ari. They also sometimes put little hints of each other in their posts. For example, Ethan had this picture in his Spamalot opening night photo dump:

Then in Ari’s post from Spamalot opening night she posted a pic of him in that same shirt, but she zoomed in on the shirt so you couldn’t see that it was him. Another example would be what you said about that pic of him FaceTiming someone. I also want to note that his social media presence is nowhere how it was a year or so ago.

2. You’re absolutely right, he did not make an anniversary post in November 2021! I don’t remember if I talked about it on here, but it’s something I thought about when all the ozgate mess came out.

At the time I just chalked it up to something Assassins related because I do remember something specifically happening on that day (they were in previews, but I think CSC might have been doing a fundraiser?? I don't remember exactly what it was). But now I find it weird that he made anniversary posts in 2019 (while filming TSBM: live on stage) and in 2020 (during a pandemic), so why not 2021? It's also been mentioned a lot here that in summer'21 E + L did a lot of moving around/traveling, so who knows what could've happened during that time. It is very strange that Ethan made 0 posts about Lilly from summer 2021 until November 2022.

[notasimpleslater]

Sorry, one more theory about Ethan coming off priv just occurred to me- maybe the divorce/costody stuff is settled (that can go pretty quickly when both parties are on the same page, it's called a desk divorce) and now that that's over with he's kinda free to post whatever he wants however he wants without it being legally held against him.

Yeah, I can definitely see this being true as well. This could also explain why he’s now down to only 33 posts.