Ethan Slater

Ethan Samuel Slater, born June 2, 1992, in Washington, D.C., is an American actor and singer whose Broadway career spans 2017 to 2023. The third child of Jay Slater, an employee at the Food and Drug Administration, Slater grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School and later Georgetown Day School. He is Jewish and was raised Conservative, attending Ohr Kodesh congregation in Silver Spring. His mother died when he was seven years old, an event he has described as a formative influence on his life. Slater went on to study drama at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Drama in 2014. During his college years, an audition for a Shakespeare workshop apprenticeship led to an audition in front of director Tina Landau, a connection that would later prove significant to his career.

Slater's first theatrical appearance came at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in July 2015, where he starred as Luis in Claudio Quest, directed by John Tartaglia, earning a nomination for the festival's Best Individual Performance award. Later that year, between September and October 2015, he appeared in Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally with the One Year Lease Theater Company. In December 2015, he joined the Delaware Theatre Company in Wilmington to perform in Barry Levinson's play Diner, directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall. During this same period, he appeared in several short films, including Lightning Bugs in a Jar and Evol.

In 2016, Slater was cast in the title role of SpongeBob SquarePants in Kyle Jarrow's musical of the same name, directed by Tina Landau, which premiered at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago. The production transferred to Broadway at the Palace Theatre, where it ran from 2017 to 2018. For his performance, Slater received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical at the 72nd Tony Awards. He won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical, both in 2018, and also received the Theatre World Award for Best Performance in a Broadway Debut that same year.

Following his Broadway debut, Slater appeared in several television series between 2018 and 2019, including Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Murphy Brown, Instinct, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. On March 4, 2019, director Bartlett Sher cast him in the theatrical special of Camelot at Lincoln Center Theater in New York. Between 2021 and 2022, he starred in the Classic Stage Company production of Assassins, directed by John Doyle, at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater in New York, playing Lee Harvey Oswald, a performance that earned him a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Best Performance. From March to April 2022, he originated the role of Max Weinbaum in the play Good Night, Oscar at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

Slater returned to Broadway from 2023 to 2024, playing the Historian, Prince Herbert, and additional roles in the revival of Spamalot at the St. James Theatre. He subsequently appeared in the two-part film adaptation of the musical Wicked, directed by Jon M. Chu, playing Boq Woodsman in Wicked (2024) and Wicked: For Good (2025). As a recording artist, Slater has released two extended plays, Wanderer in 2019 and Life Is Weird in 2020.

In his personal life, Slater began dating clinical psychologist Lilly Jay, a former high school classmate, in 2012. The two married in 2018, and their son was born in August 2022. They separated shortly before Slater filed for divorce in July 2023, with the divorce finalized in September 2024. Since July 2023, Slater has been in a relationship with singer Ariana Grande, whom he met on the set of Wicked.