Selena Gomez has conquered show business in seemingly every way in her young career, with 16 Guinness World Records along the way including being the “most followed woman on Instagram” (423 million, in case you are counting).
Her musical career — more than 38 billion streams — is full of highlights. Her earliest years in shows like 2002’s Barney and Friends and Wizards of Waverly Place — the latter of which she has just helped to reboot as a producer and a guest star — were successes, followed by intriguing acting work in The Fundamentals of Caring opposite Paul Rudd, voice work in the hit Hotel Transylvania movies and transformative roles in the likes of The Dead Don’t Die and Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers. There also has been a well-reviewed and very personal documentary along the way, Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me, and she is developing a biopic to play the great Linda Ronstadt.
But this year she is exploding in her acting career which as she tells me in this week’s episode of my Deadline video series, The Actor’s Side is where she prefers to be concentrating right now, although promising more music to come.
Actually there is plenty of music in her Golden Globe-nominated supporting role as Jessi in the sensational Emilia Pérez, which — along with her three co-stars — won her the Cannes Film Festival Best Actress award in May and has Oscar buzz for her as well. She sings in this one, but it is the intense acting performance that really resonates. She was nominated for two Globes — one for the movies with Emilia Pérez, and one for her continuing role as Mabel Mora opposite Steve Martin and Martin Short in Hulu’s hit comedy series Only Murders in the Building which won her a first Lead Actress in a Comedy Series Emmy nomination and another as a producer on the show making her the most-nominated Latina producer in Emmy history.
We talk about all of this, the making of Emilia Pérez and the continuing success of Only Murders in the Building and so much more. Gomez earned SAG Awards noms for both today — making her the only actor this year going to SAG as a nominee in both movies and TV.
To watch our conversation and to get the “actor’s side” of things from Selena Gomez, just click the link above.
Watch a new episode of The Actor’s Side every Wednesday during Oscar season.