Selena Gomez’s acting career is on fire—she just won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for her titular role in the film Emilia Pérez, her show Only Murders in the Building is filming season four right now, and the sky’s the limit, with plans in the works for Gomez to portray singer Linda Ronstadt in an upcoming biopic. Lest we forget that Gomez is also a talented musician, but she told TIME in a cover story interview that she’s not sure if she’ll ever tour again eight years after abruptly canceling her “Revival” tour because of mental health struggles.
Gomez said she’s “50-50” on whether she’ll tour again, and called the experience “very emotionally draining”: “Nothing makes me happier than 90 minutes of being with my fans and just celebrating together,” she said. However, “It is very emotionally draining for me, and then you realize you’re just surrounded by a bunch of people that you’re paying.”
Gomez last toured in 2016 in an effort supporting her third studio album, Revival. Per Us Weekly, Gomez left the tour after 55 dates “and checked into a treatment center amid mounting issues with anxiety and depression, which had been side effects of her battle with lupus,” the outlet writes, adding that Gomez was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease in 2015.
Her 2023 documentary My Mind and Me opens as Gomez was preparing for the global “Revival” tour, with Gomez tearfully saying in rehearsals “It looks so bad. I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing.” With internal pressure mounting to put on a perfect show, she continued “I get the voice that comes in my head that says, ‘You missed this. That sucked.’” She added that “It sucks the life out of me, and I don’t want to perform.”
Those close to Gomez said in My Mind and Me that the tour was canceled because of a “psychotic break”: “Her answer was like, ‘I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I wish you could feel what it feels like to be in my head,’” Gomez’s best friend Raquelle Stevens said. “I just remember it being very chaotic and she was hearing all of these voices.” She added “That triggered some sort of psychotic break.”
Us Weekly reports that Gomez was hospitalized on and off for three years; she eventually made her return to music in March 2021 when she released the Spanish language LP Revelación, which was nominated for a Grammy. In August 2023, she put out the Benny Blanco-produced song “Single Soon,” but said after that she wasn’t sure if she’d make more music. (Blanco, by the way, is also Gomez’s boyfriend of nearly a year.)
“I do feel like I have one more album in me, but I would probably choose acting,” Gomez said on the “SmartLess” podcast back in January. “I am going to want to chill, because I’m tired.”
