Man Who Accosted Ariana Grande at ‘Wicked’ Premiere Banned from Singapore

NEED TO KNOW
- Johnson Wen, the man who accosted Ariana Grande at the Singapore premiere of Wicked: For Good, has been deported and banned from the country
- He was previously sentenced to nine days in jail after pleading guilty to one charge of being a public nuisance
- Grande has yet to comment publicly on the incident, in which her Wicked costar Cynthia Erivo intervened
The man who rushed at Ariana Grande and grabbed her during the Wicked: For Good premiere in Singapore has been deported and banned from the country following the completion of his nine-day jail sentence.
Johnson Wen, the 26-year-old Australian native who leapt over the barricade at the premiere to charge at the actress on Nov. 13, was deported to Australia on Sunday, Nov. 23, BBC News, CBS News and ABC News reported, citing the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) and local media.
Wen, who goes by the name “Pyjama Man” online and has a history of disrupting celebrity events, has now been “barred from re-entering Singapore,” the outlets reported, once again citing the ICA.
The deportation and ban comes after Wen served a nine-day jail term after pleading guilty to one charge of being a public nuisance on Nov. 17.
The ICA did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
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Wen’s sentencing came four days after he charged Grande, 32, while she was walking the carpet at Universal Studios Singapore at the premiere of the new Wicked movie.
Videos of the incident, including one that Wen shared on his own Instagram account, circulated widely online. Footage shows the Australian man — wearing a white shirt and shorts, and sporting long black hair with dyed blue streaks — sprinting at and putting his arm around Grande, pulling her close to him as she attempted to escape his grasp.
Security at the event, along with Grande’s Wicked costar Cynthia Erivo, quickly stepped in to separate Wen from Grande, who looked visibly shaken by the incident. (Grande has been open in the past about experiencing PTSD in the wake of the 2017 bombing at her Manchester concert, which took the lives of 22 people.)
In the immediate aftermath, she could be seen letting out deep breaths as Erivo, 38, and their fellow costar, Michelle Yeoh, comforted her.
A Singapore judge called Wen “attention-seeking” on Nov. 17 and said the man wrongly assumed his actions would have no consequences, according to The New York Times. Though the Australian man told the judge he would not “do it again,” referring to the incident involving Grande, prosecutors in the case cited what they described as Wen’s “glaring lack of remorse.”
Wen is known for crashing celebrity events and making headlines. He has gone onstage at concerts and other events with celebrities on several occasions in the past, including Katy Perry and The Weeknd shows over the summer.
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Grande has not publicly commented on the incident. The day after the Singapore premiere, she shared several images from the movie’s press tour stop on Instagram. “Thank you, Singapore. we love you,” she captioned the post.
Erivo has broken her silence on the shocking incident, however. While appearing on the Today show on Nov. 20, the actress said she “just wanted to make sure” Grande was safe.
“I was really thinking, I just wanted to make sure my friend was safe,” she recalled. “I’m sure he didn’t mean us harm, but I just, you never know with those things and I wanted to make sure that she was okay. That was my first instinct.”
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