We admit that “7 Rings” and Friends star Lisa Kudrow was not the mashup we saw coming, but the internet is the home of things both wonderful and strange. Kudrow shared a video on Instagram of Ariana Grande’s already-iconic music video cut with a clip from her HBO show, The Comeback. The result is a total trip down the uncanny valley.
The video splices Grande’s chorus lyrics “I want it, I got it / I want it, I got it,” with Kudrow repeating “I got it!” in front of a blue screen. The source is a scene in the pilot episode of The Comeback, in which Kudrow plays Valerie Cherish, who stars in a reality TV show about being an aging sitcom actress (yes, it’s very meta). Cherish is attempting to nail a confessional about getting cast in a part, exclaiming, “I got it!” A producer off-screen isn’t convinced that Cherish’s enthusiasm is real, so she asks Cherish to repeat the phrase several times. Cherish eventually becomes frustrated and storms off the set.
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The Comeback, which is like Curb Your Enthusiasm with fourth wall-breaking confessionals, is an interesting choice to splice with Grande’s video. It’s worth noting that there is power and reclamation in “7 Rings”; her lyrics portray Grande as a woman who can purchase her own luxury goods. Meanwhile, the footage of Cherish portrays her as someone desperate to re-enter fame’s good graces in a process over which she has no control. The video was ostensibly created as pure internet novelty, but the horrifying implication is that the now-empowered Grande is only years away from fading from the limelight, at which point she will be another Valerie Cherish, doing reality TV takes as a burned-out star. We hope we’re not reading too much into this, but watch it yourself and see where the vibes take you.