Ethan Slater’s ex-wife Lilly Jay is breaking her silence on her divorce from the Wicked actor and his relationship with Ariana Grande—and is highlighting her experience as a psychologist in the process.
For background: Ethan and Lilly were married and welcomed a son in 2022. But a year later, reports came out that the couple were separated and he was dating Ariana, whom he’d met on the set of Wicked. Ariana and her ex-husband, Dalton Gomez, also split that year.
It’s important to stress that only a few people really know what happened here. But now, Lilly has spoken up in a new essay for The Cut. In it, Lilly discusses what it’s been like to navigate a divorce in the public eye, plus how it’s impacted her career in the mental health field.
“I really never thought I would get divorced,” she wrote. “Especially not just after giving birth to my first child and especially not in the shadow of my husband’s new relationship with a celebrity.”
But in the essay, Lilly shared that her background helped her to navigate this challenge. Here’s what you need to know about her career.
She’s a clinical psychologist working in New York and New Jersey.
Lilly is a licensed clinical psychologist “with advanced training in supporting parents navigating infertility, medically-complex pregnancies and perinatal/infant loss,” her bio on Perinatal Mental Health Provider Directory reads. She also works with children.
Lilly has degrees from Columbia University and Long Island University, according to her LinkedIn.
In her essay, Lilly wrote that her personal life may have impacted her work as a psychologist. “It’s hard to measure an absence, and I can’t say for sure how much my career has been impacted by what’s out there online,” she wrote. “But there have been hints along the way, like the job offer that dissolved without explanation after yet another tabloid news cycle or the patient who’s scheduled for a first appointment but seemingly vanishes.”
“Of course, I am not owed anything, whether it be a job or the privilege of being any given person’s psychologist,” she continued. “Still, even as someone who spent years researching how people respond to ambiguity, I hate not knowing if the way my story has been told has impacted my opportunity to help others sort through their stories.”
She specializes in perinatal and postpartum mental health.
Lilly has worked in a special delivery unit and NICU “to walk alongside patients experiencing trauma and grief alongside the joy of parenting,” her bio says.
“I am also able to continue supporting growing families after birth and into the early years of their child’s life because of my experience providing dyadic therapy, play therapy, and parenting support,” she said. “Patients will feel both understood and cared for as well as challenged.”
After having her son, Lilly experienced postpartum depression herself, a condition that she helps treat. “My entire adult life, I feared that loss of control and postpartum depression would destroy me,” she wrote in her essay. “One day in London, I looked up and found that they had both arrived. And I am okay. If I can’t be invisible anymore, I may as well introduce myself.”
She experienced preeclampsia herself.
Lilly also “survived” preeclampsia, a condition that causes high blood pressure during pregnancy or after giving birth.
“During my pregnancy, I had never felt happier nor more aware of how precarious happiness could be,” she wrote in her essay. “When my baby was first placed on my chest, still tethered to me by his umbilical cord, I sobbed with relief. We had done it. He had arrived.”
She was married to actor Ethan Slater for five years and shares a son with him.
Lilly and Ethan started dating when they were sophomores in college, although they first met in high school, according to People. The couple got married in 2018 and welcomed their son in August 2022. Ethan filed for divorce in the summer of 2023.
Lilly suggests in her essay that parenthood was too big of a stress on her marriage to Ethan.
“As a perinatal psychologist, I knew all the statistics—how vulnerable a marriage is in the postpartum period, how vital community connection is in preventing depression and anxiety, how new parenthood impacts a whole family—but I confidently moved to another country with my 2-month-old baby and my husband to support his career,” she said. “Consumed by the magic and mundanity of new motherhood, I didn’t understand the growing distance between us.”
Before this, Lilly had only said that media outlets should focus on Ariana, not her.
“[Ariana’s] the story, really. Not a girl’s girl,” she told Page Six. “My family is just collateral damage.”
Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, with work appearing in Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Self, Glamour, and more. She has a master’s degree from American University, lives by the beach, and hopes to own a teacup pig and taco truck one day.
