Ariana Grande's viral lookalike Paige Niemann built her new docuseries around the 2019 DM where Grande told her to look like herself

Paige Niemann spent most of her teens as the internet's second-best Ariana Grande. This week she put out a six-part docuseries about quitting the job.

Turning the Paige landed on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video on July 8, six episodes tracking the 22-year-old content creator as she peels off the winged eyeliner and the sky-high ponytail and tries to build a modeling career as herself. The episode titles do most of the talking: "Paige One," "Flipping the Paige," "Love Notes & Headlines," "Cover Girl," "Signed, Dad," and the finale, "A Torn Paige." Along the way there is a Rolling Stone UK feature, a runway debut, and a four-year reunion with her father.

The moment that actually broke containment online, though, is a screenshot. In the finale, Niemann shares a DM she says Grande sent her back in 2019, right when the lookalike videos first blew up on TikTok. The account Pop Crave posted it and it went everywhere.

TWEET_CARD

Here is the message in full, as Niemann presented it and as reported by NME:

"i am flattered and i am sure you're very sweet. but i just wanted you to know, i looked back a little ways on your page and i think someone should tell you if they haven't today that you're very beautiful as YOURSELF. without all the make up and trying to make your face look more similar to someone else's and whatnot. i had to say it because it is the truth. always do what makes you happy of course but if i didn't say that to you, i'd regret it. you're beautiful as you are. take care."

Read one way, it is a genuinely kind note from a famous person to a teenager. Read another, it is the pop star you have built an entire identity around gently asking you to please stop. Niemann uses it as the emotional close of a series that is, start to finish, about untangling the two.

This is not the first time Grande has addressed the resemblance. Back in 2019, when the clips of Niemann doing Grande's Cat Valentine voice first spread, Grande called the whole thing "bizarre" in a livestream while insisting Niemann seemed "the sweetest." Six years later Niemann is the one holding the receipts, and that sweetness reads a little differently once it is the thesis of your own documentary.

The timing does not hurt. Grande has a new album, Petal, due July 31, and the Eternal Sunshine tour running now, so her name is doing plenty of search-engine work this month without a docuseries about her most dedicated impersonator adding to it.

One caveat on the receipts: the DM is Niemann's to share, not Grande's, and Grande's team has not commented on it. It is presented here the way she presented it.