Selena Gomez on shedding her Disney-crafted image: ‘I definitely feel free of it’

Selena Gomez talks about being censored as a Disney Channel child star — and its lasting repercussions.

The Only Murders in the Building star, 30, opened up about her early days in showbiz — including starring in the Mickey Mouse network's Wizards of Waverly Place from 2007 to 2012 — for Vanity Fair's Hollywood issue, admitting thinking back to that period can be "triggering." Disney execs have famously tried to craft squeaky clean images for its child stars, especially in the '00s era in which Gomez came up with Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers.

"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," Gomez recalled. "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."

Having to watch what she said as teen — she played Alex Russo from ages 15 to 20, but appeared on the network's Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody in the year prior — led to her truth tour as an adult. Arguably one of the most talked about stars — certainly when it comes to her love life and a certain ex — Gomez went public with her bipolar disorder diagnosis in 2020. She pulled back the curtain even further in her 2022 doc, Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me, which showed her years-long struggles with fame as well as her physical and mental well-being amid her lupus and bipolar diagnoses.

"I definitely feel free of it," she said of moving past her Disney association — and the rules that came with 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."

Not all members of Gomez's inner circle thought she should publicly share her bipolar diagnosis, or delve deeper into it in the doc, but doing so allowed her to feel a sense of freedom she never had before.

"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," she said. "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."

She added, "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."

Gomez said she was "terrified" about getting so candid in her doc, but one of the plusses has been in the interactions she now has with fans. They used to just approach her for a photo, but now they thank her for sharing her mental health struggle — and get candid about their own.

"I started to feel good because I wasn't just this prop to people — like, 'You're so cute. Let's take a picture,'" she said. "It was more than that. It was a conversation about mental health or courage or disappointment or loss. And I started to go, this is paying off, because that's what I want at the end of the day. I'd rather be remembered for my heart than anything else."

Gomez, who got her start in Barney & Friends in 2002, also talked about social media toxicity — and the plan she has in place for combating it. She said never having gone to an actual high school as a child star, "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."

She said it was not the one-line mean comments calling her "ugly or stupid," which she receives, that stung the most. "These people get detailed," she said of trolls. "They write paragraphs that are so specific and mean. I would constantly be crying. I constantly had anxiety... I couldn't do it anymore."

Now, anything Gomez posts to social, she sends to her assistant. Any comments she sees are vetted by her team for things that are "encouraging," not hateful. She said she prefers to TikTok to the others because it's "a little less hostile," and that's the only app she keeps on her phone.

As an industry vet now, Gomez — who's working on Season 3 of Only Murders with her co-stars Steve Martin and Martin Short as well as some VIP guest stars — also shared her advice to newcomers breaking into showbiz, and it's blunt.

"...This industry is a beast," she said. "It's really scary to see what happens when you're given so much power and money at a young age. I think it's extremely scary." She went on to encourage humbleness and advised newbies to "Hold on to your heart ... and be careful about who to trust, because you are who you surround yourself with."

She said she can't imagine her 9-year-old sister, Gracie Elliot Teefey, following in her footsteps into showbiz.

"Thank God she doesn't want to be in this industry," Gomez said of her sibling, who is about the age she was when she started appearing on TV. "Actually, that's her now. What if she tells me in two years she wants to? I can't even think about it."