Selena Gomez, who appears on our 2023 Hollywood cover, spent years feeling distressed by her Disney-cultivated façade. But since her 2018 bipolar diagnosis, and her decision to share her mental health struggles in last year’s Apple TV+ documentary Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me, the singer, actor, and producer (Selena + Chef, Only Murders in the Building) has felt liberated. Ahead, excerpts from a conversation about fears, self-esteem, and freedom.
Vanity Fair: You’ve previously said you were haunted by the idea that people would always associate you with your Disney years. Has that changed since releasing your documentary?
Selena Gomez: I definitely feel free of it. Sometimes I get triggered. It’s not that I’m ashamed of my past, it’s just that I’ve worked so hard to find my own way. I don’t want to be who I was. I want to be who I am.
In the documentary, someone close to you questions your decision to go public with your bipolar diagnosis. Why did you go forward anyway?
I’m just so used to censoring myself that it was (a) me wanting to let go and (b) if they’re telling me to be quiet about it, that’s not good because that’s genuinely not the place I’m in anymore.
Maybe it was weird and uncomfortable for other people, and obviously I was worried, but I think it finally allowed me to start being open about everything. It’s not that I was kind of sad—I actually have things that are chemically imbalanced in my brain, and I need to understand what that is, take care of it, and nurture it. I’m not ashamed of it. I don’t ever feel, even for five seconds, that I’m crazy. My thoughts tend to ruminate, but it’s up to me to be proud of who I am and to take care of myself.
I don’t want people to ever have anybody tell them, “Don’t say that because it’ll seem bad. You won’t get this job or that boy or that girl or whatever.” I guess I was rebelling.
I imagine there were moments in your early career where you were explicitly told, “You can’t say such-and-such.”
Of course. I wasn’t a wild child by any means, but I was on Disney, so I had to make sure not to say “What the hell?” in front of anyone. It’s stuff that I was also putting on myself to be the best role model I could be. Now I think being the best role model is being honest, even with the ugly and complicated parts of yourself.
Trench coat by LaQuan Smith; bodysuit by Skims; ear cuff and ring by Givenchy; choker by Swarovski.PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVEN KLEIN; STYLED BY PATTI WILSON.
You’re one of the few stars to be upfront about outsourcing your social media accounts to an assistant, because of how toxic you felt Instagram, in particular, to be. Can you talk about that decision?
I never got the chance to go to an actual high school. The world was my high school for the longest time, and I started getting inundated with information that I didn’t want. I went through a hard time in a breakup and I didn’t want to see any of the [feedback]—not necessarily about the relationship, but the opinions of me versus [someone] else. There’d be thousands of really nice comments, but my mind goes straight to the mean one.
