Ariana Grande will not appear in the 13th season of American Horror Story after all, with her exit driven by a scheduling conflict with her ongoing Eternal Sunshine Tour, according to THR.
Grande was announced as part of the AHS Season 13 cast on Halloween 2025, marking her first appearance on the Ryan Murphy anthology series and a reunion with the producer following her role on his 2015 series Scream Queens. But a recently released teaser for the season, subtitled 13, did not feature her, with reports that a change to the show’s production schedule had created a direct conflict with her set tour dates. Grande did not shoot any scenes for the season.
The timing lines up with a run of scheduling turbulence for the singer’s live show. AHS Season 13 began production in April, and Grande’s Eternal Sunshine Tour launched June 6 in Oakland. In late June, she rescheduled three of her own tour dates — moving a July 12 Brooklyn show to July 14 and shifting two Boston concerts from July 22 and 24 to July 23 and 26 — citing production issues on her end. The tour continues through stops in New York, Canada and Chicago before wrapping overseas.
American Horror Story: 13 moves forward with a returning ensemble that includes Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Angela Bassett, Kathy Bates, Emma Roberts, Billie Lourd and Jessica Lange, alongside director John Waters. The season, which reunites several cast members reprising their Coven characters, is set to premiere Sept. 24 on FX before streaming on Hulu.
For Grande, the acting detour was always secondary to the tour driving it. Eternal Sunshine — her seventh studio album, released in 2024 — has powered her first headlining run since 2019’s Sweetener World Tour, debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for her sixth career chart-topping album and spinning off two Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 singles. Her eighth album, Petal, arrives July 31, led by “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” which recently gave her a 10th career Hot 100 No. 1 — tying her for 10th-most in the chart’s history.
Her film work isn’t disappearing, either: she’s set to appear next in the Meet the Parents sequel Focker-In-Law, due out this fall.
