Selena Gomez‘s new documentary, “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me,” gives viewers a candid look at her life, beginning in 2016 and spanning to present day. In the Apple TV+ film, which is out now, the 30-year-old singer opens up about her career, her mental health, and her relationship history. Overall, it’s a sharp and moving portrait of a child star turned major celebrity who’s gone through so much in her first 30 years of life. Ahead, we’re breaking down the biggest revelations from Gomez’s documentary.
In 2016, Gomez embarked on her “Revival” tour, but she ended up canceling it after 55 shows. At the time and as shown in the documentary, she cited anxiety and depression, which was exacerbated by her lupus, as the reason for the cancelation. In “My Mind & Me,” Gomez explains that her mental health struggles were even more complicated than she told fans at the time. She eventually experienced psychosis and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
But in the doc, Gomez reveals that she was already feeling the pressure well before the tour dates actually began. The film opens with footage of her in rehearsals, and though her performance seems to go fine, she cries in the dressing room after and berates herself. “The pressure is overwhelming,” she says through tears, hypercritical of her performance. “Everything looked so bad.” Her team tries to emphasize that it was great and that things she doesn’t like can be changed, but she clearly feels overwhelmed.
During the documentary, Gomez visits her hometown in Texas. She makes a trip to her old middle school to surprise students, chats with an old neighbor who used to give her cookies and let her play with her massive dollhouse, and drops in on the house where she grew up. She looks inside her childhood bedroom, where she says she wrote Dylan and Cole Sprouse’s names on her wall. The object she wrote on is still in the house, and the camera shows where she wrote the twins’ names with hearts.
The twin actors starred on Disney’s “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody” starting in 2005. Gomez would lead her own Disney show, “Wizards of Waverly Place” two years later. She also appeared in a 2006 episode of “Suite Life,” and she would go on to appear on “The Suite Life on Deck” as her “Wizards” character, Alex Russo. Gomez and the Sprouse twins all turned 30 this past August.
Related: Selena Gomez Returns to Waverly Place: “Where It All Began”
At the start of “My Mind & Me,” Gomez breaks down during “Revival” tour rehearsals and says, “It just sucks too, cause like the whole song thing.” At first it’s not clear what she’s talking about, but she continues, “[Interscope CEO John Janick] called me this morning about the song with Justin and I’m like, ‘When am I just gonna be good enough by myself? When am I gonna be good just by myself, not needing anyone to be associated with?'” She adds later, “I want nothing more than to not be my past.”
Gomez doesn’t say what the song is, but it looks like she was referring DJ Snake’s “Let Me Love You,” which was released that August. The song was ultimately released in 2016 with Justin Bieber singing the track. But Gomez has previously teased the track on her Snapchat story with her vocals on the song, according to MTV. DJ Snake also posted a long clip that clearly featured Gomez singing, according to the outlet.
Gomez talks briefly about her biological dad, Ricardo Gomez. She explains that her mom, Mandy Teefey, had her when she was a teenager and her parents separated when she was 5. Crying, she says that her dad always made it clear that he loved her and thought she could “do anything,” but she admits they are not close and that she misses him “a lot.” “He knows that, so,” Gomez concludes.
Besides that one mention in her dressing room, Gomez never says Bieber’s name in the documentary. But the film uses footage of the paparazzi hounding her and constantly asking about her famous ex to show that he’s always a presence in her life, whether or not she wants him to be. “I felt haunted by a past relationship that no one wanted to let go of,” she says at one point. Gomez never addresses the relationship and what happened between them beyond that. She also doesn’t talk about any of her other relationships, including when she dated The Weeknd in 2017 when the documentary was filming.
“It’s the fastest song I’ve ever written,” Gomez said of 2019’s “Lose You to Love Me.” She wrote the track with Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter, and she says it took her just 45 minutes. Gomez says in the film that she just wanted it to express that she was “sad.” The track was inspired by that “haunted” feeling, Gomez says, explaining, “The song is about knowing you lost every part of who you are just to rediscover yourself again.” She says it was about how she “moved past” her relationship with Bieber. “And I wasn’t afraid anymore,” she says. Later the singer explains, “I feel like I had to go through the worst possible heartbreak ever, and then just forgetting everything at the drop of a hand. It was really confusing but I just think that needed to happen. And ultimately, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
The documentary chronicles Gomez doing a press tour in early 2020 in Paris and London, tied to the release of her third studio album, “Rare.” Gomez doesn’t hide how much she hates doing the press. “It’s my least favorite thing in the world to do,” she says, and the film shows how annoyed she is at some of the silly, pointless questions she’s asked. But eventually she loses her cool. “Do you know how cheap it makes me feel?” Gomez asks her entourage. “I feel like a product.”
“It was like making me angry,” she says of an interviewer who she feels wasn’t even listening to her answers. “You know what it is, it made me feel like Disney,” she eventually says. “I’ve spent years, years of my life trying to not be that.”
At the end of the doc, she talks to her friend Raquelle Stevens about her journey. Gomez admits that she’s still not entirely sure what she wants, though she does know some of the things that make her happy.
Gomez says in voiceover at the end, “I’m really happy. I’m at peace. I’m angry. I’m sad. I’m confident. I’m full of doubt. I’m a work in progress. I am enough. I am Selena.”
Related: Selena Gomez Shows Off Her Massive Neck Tattoo in a Purple Silk Gown
