Inside the Making of the ‘Thank U Next’ Video With Law Roach

On November 30, Ariana Grande finally dropped the video for Thank U, Next breaking YouTube records and garnering tons of praise from celebs (including one very enthusiastic Mark Ruffalo) for her tributes to Legally Blonde, 13 Going on 30, Bring It On, and Mean Girls. As with many videos in the past, Grande worked with director Hannah Lux Davis and image architect Law Roach to create the smash hit, a success due in part to the amazing costumes Roach and his team crafted. I caught up with Roach (who first broke onto the scene for his work with Zendaya and Celine Dion) to learn more about dressing the current queen of pop and why he likes to call Grande Magic Feet.

On the process:

I’ve been working with her forever. I think this was my ninth Ariana Grande video and we approached [this one] more like a short film than a video. We prepped it for almost a week and then we shot over the course of three days. So yeah, it was a bit of a process. Nobody really does three day videos anymore, so that just shows you how serious Ariana and Hannah took this video! Some of the things that you see are custom, so with the custom it’s of course coming up with the look and then going back and forth with sketches, and then first draft of the custom, and then alterations.

On recreating looks, but staying true to Ariana’s style:

For Elle Woods, we didn’t want to do exactly what the character was wearing so we just tried to update it and make it a little bit more modern and a little bit more Ariana. Elle wore more of a pencil-skirt and Ariana’s iconic for that A-line skirt so we just made little slight things and changed the fabrication of it. In the Mean Girls hall scene, I wanted the bag that she carries to be authentic. It’s not the exact same one that Regina George carried but it is from the same Louis Vuitton Murakami collaboration with the cherry blossoms. She’s wearing platform sneakers in the Bring it On cheerleading scene and let me tell you something about Ariana Grande. I’ve worked with a lot of women, and been around a lot of women, but I have never met anyone who can wear high-heeled shoes like her. Never. She walks around in platform shoes all day long. When she was touring, she was on tour, a lot of people didn’t realize this but when she danced and performed for two hours, every shoe that she wore was platform, no flats at all. We did a show at Anaheim where she danced in all the shoes. She wrapped the show, changed clothes, put on another pair of platform shoe sand walked around Disney Land for another couple hours. I always call her Magic Feet. I’ve never seen anything like it, ever.

On the atmosphere on set:

It was honestly probably one of the most fun videos I’ve ever done because she had tons of people in for cameos. I’ve been working with Ariana for years, I’ve worked with Hannah for years, but to see Ari being able to work with her best friends and have them in the video and have them on set every day, and had them in the fittings, it was really cool. Ariana is undoubtedly the biggest pop star in the world, but she’s like a kid, especially when she’s around her best friends. So it’s like watching her, not in “pop star element”, but seeing her with her friends and her mom and fan-girling over the people who would stop by to do the cameos. You know, Ariana is known for doing a “Jennifer Coolidge” impersonation, so to see her meet her and she’s like “Oh shit, I can’t believe she did it!” It’s always so cute when people are vulnerable and excited to meet other people, so that was really great.