The Director Behind Ariana Grande's 'Thank U, Next' Music Video Tells All

You may not know the name Hannah Lux Davis, but you've definitely seen her music videos. Cool for the Summer by Demi Lovato? A Hannah Lux Davis production. Side to Side by Ariana Grande featuring Nicki Minaj? Yea, that ode to Spinning is the work of HLD. She's worked with David Guetta, Fifth Harmony, Halsey, Sabrina Carpenter, Liam Payne, and many more. Did I mention she's only 32 years old?

How did Davis win the Top 100 seal of approval so quickly? She made her own path. Moving to L.A. directly out of high school, she dove into two different film programs (she attended NYFA and the L.A. Film School). "I ended up being a PA on various things and I realized quickly that PA-ing was not gonna be a route for me to succeed," Davis tells me over the phone. "I was 21 and I went to makeup school. I was like, 'you know what? If I'm gonna be on set I need to have some skill that's gonna allow me to be on the creative side.'"

Meanwhile, she edited anything she could get her hands on and begged musicians to let her make their music videos—she'd even offer to pay for it. Before she knew it, she was wading deeper and deeper into the industry, and making a name for herself. But she never could have imagined where she'd be today.

Just this past Friday, Davis released Thank u, next, the record-smashing, early aughts movie-referencing music video set to Ariana Grande's cathartic breakup masterpiece. Davis spoke to Cosmo about working with Grande and all those Easter eggs.

So, how did it feel when you found out that there were over 800 thousand viewers watching the premiere live?

It was so insane. I was one of those people who was logged into the chat on YouTube and it was, I've never felt that much buzz around the release of a video. Especially one that I've done. So that was really really exciting.

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Yeah. It's pretty insane. I can't stop saying that word 'cause that's what it feels like.

Thank u, next seems like such a crazy feat, considering Ariana's breakup with Pete Davidson happened in just mid-October. How was this pulled together so quickly?

It is a very fast timeline. I did her Breathin' video, which came out not too long ago, and we were working on pre-production for that in New York and I was at her place, in her living room—like, gathered around on the floor—talking about creative things for Breathin' and then she stopped us and she was like, "You know, I really wanna play you my new music. I'm so excited about it," and so she played me Thank u, next.

Right away, I was just like, "Holy shit. This is so incredible." [Ariana was] being so specific, and calling things out so personally in this breakup song, but the perspective of it was just so different, she was redefining what a breakup song could be. She put this really positive, fun, empowered twist on it, which I feel like hadn't really been tapped into this specifically.

You know? There's been songs of like, yeah I'm movin' on, but this is a very tongue-in-cheek sort of play on it, and naming names as well, and I just remember being like blown away by her guts to do that and like so fearlessly. It was just so exciting.

And you guys just took off right away?

So she's like, "What if we did a Mean Girls themed music video"? That, obviously, was super exciting because I was obsessed with Mean Girls. Then it kind of expanded, well, what if we did this movie and that movie and this movie, and it became this big thing. In the end he movies that we were all really excited about were Legally Blonde, 13 Going on 30, and Bring It On.

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Why those movies, specifically?

What all those movies had in common is that they're all very much a breakup story where the girl comes out on the other side, more empowered, fulfilled, determined woman who has really found their way.

I think that's really representative of what Thank u, next is. It's really about like, "thank you, you know, next." It becomes a moment.

I wanna know, were all of these Easter eggs Ariana's ideas?

It's very much a collaborative process. I know that she's all about the Easter eggs, so when I worked with my team, especially the art team, and wardrobe styling, we'll have conversations about like, "Hey, wherever we can, let's work things in. Let's work Ariana things in."

We were thinking, "how can we make these films into an Ariana Grande film?" So we went in to everything with that intention. Even down to the high school name, and the uniforms and all these other things that you threw in there, whenever there's a moment to change something in the effects, I would do a screen grab of the shot and be like, "Ariana, what should we put here?"

What was your favorite hidden message?

I think something that came up right, first and foremost, was the Clovers uniform. We said Lovers instead of Clovers. It all kinda goes into the theme of positivity about love. And I think that was a big one because it's so close already to the Clovers. Just take out the C, and it becomes a little nugget.

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'Thank U, Next'

Do you know Ariana's?

Honestly I think that Ariana's favorite part must be the wardrobe and being all the different characters and getting to sort of dip into these roles that she idolized as a little girl.

The film had some original Mean Girls actors involved, did anyone consider reaching out to Lindsay Lohan?

No, we wanted to have her friends be the roles of her, of the plastics. From the get-go, Ariana was like, "I'm gonna have Alexa [Luria] as Karen, and Courtney [Chipolone] as Gretchen, and Liz [Gillies] as Cady."

She was really adamant about her friends being so prominent in the video. I feel like it's really cool because she had said, you know, these are the girls that have been by her side during these hard times and she is so excited to have this moment with them, forever time capsuled, of all these, her best friends with her, just gettin' loose and having a good time and really showing her fans this side of them.

Was there any scenes that didn't make it into the video?

There's lots and lots of footage, so you'll just have to wait and see.