In a scene from her Apple TV+ documentary, "Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me," Gomez is shown spending time with a childhood friend in her hometown of Grand Prairie, Texas.
Gomez, 30, returns to the northeast Grand Prairie neighborhood where she grew from birth to 13 years old, checking in with people who knew her before she became an Emmy and Grammy nominee.
She meets up with a childhood friend, whose young children recognize her.
“Yeah, she’s real!” her friend tells her daughter. “Mommy went to school with her.”
In an interview with People, director Alek Keshishian said the scene shows how Gomez anchors herself when she returns to Texas.
“She seems to get energy by being in the presence of her past,” Keshishian said. “She doesn’t look down on anybody, she is right there with the people — that’s what makes her unique. She feels as much love for her past as she does for her future.”
The film premiered Friday on Apple TV+. It opened the 36th American Film Institute Fest in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
Gomez has made her mark as a singer, selling more than 210 million singles worldwide, and amassed over 45 billion global streams of her music. As an actor, she’s now starring in Hulu’s "Only Murders in the Building," for which she’s earned an Emmy nomination as a producer for Outstanding Comedy Series.
Apple TV+ describes "My Mind & Me" as a “uniquely raw and intimate documentary” that will delve into the highest highs of Gomez’s career and also shine a light onto some of the darker moments.
It covers a six-year period that reveals major moments in Gomez’s life, including a kidney transplant to treat lupus, her bipolar diagnosis and the cancellation of one her tours due to mental health issues.
Keshishian has covered similar territory. In 1991, he directed Madonna’s no-holds-barred documentary "Truth or Dare." Keshishian first worked with Gomez on the music video for “Can’t Keep My Hands to Myself.”
“I had no interest in making a traditional pop doc,” he said. “I wanted to show something more authentic and Selena did, too. She has a raw vulnerability that captured me … I had no idea then that it would become a six-year labor of love.”
In a full-length trailer, Gomez voices over a montage of clips of her at various stages of life. Her narration reflects her journey as she takes on health challenges.
“No one cares about what you’re doing. It’s about who I am. Being OK with where I am. I am grateful to be alive,” she said.
Keshishian told Vogue that Gomez approached him about doing the documentary twice before they decided to go forward in 2019.
“We didn’t really know if there was going to be a bigger documentary; I think we were quite innocent about it,” he told Vogue. “But we developed a closeness, and then we had this shared vision that this story could maybe help others. And that became our motivating factor as we kept shooting.”
Gomez’s mother, Mandy Teefey, a former stage actress, told E! News that she and her daughter have both agreed not to watch the documentary.
“[It] kind of just put me in a headspace that you just don’t want to revisit after you’ve grown through so much,” Teefey said.
Gomez was also asked how she would react once the film is released.
“I definitely want to go into hiding after this comes out. I had to separate myself from it and understand what I felt the movie was going to be for other people.”
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