Selena Gomez at the 27th Annual Critics Choice Awards held at the The Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel on March 13, 2022 in Century City, Calif.
Gilbert Flores
Selena Gomez sat down with The Hollywood Reporter‘s Awards Chatter podcast on Monday (June 13) to look back on Wizards of Waverly Place, her friendship with Demi Lovato and more.
During the interview, the pop star also recalled her first audition for Barney, where she sat in an open call with 1,400 other kids. “Out of all those kids, they picked seven, and I happened to be one of them,” she remembered.
Another of the seven young hopefuls was none other than Lovato, who would go on to become, at turns, Gomez’s best friend, rival and Disney Channel co-star. “The wildest part of that story is that she was actually the girl standing in front of me,” Gomez continued. “I remember she had a red bow on, I’ll never forget it…I just thought the world of her. And we both ended up, after we got the part, we didn’t know if the other one did. And we just had this, like, mini reunion when we saw each other.”
Eventually, Gomez went on to star in her own Disney Channel original series, Wizards of Waverly Place, after guest appearances on Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and a few other failed pilots. At the same time, she began dipping her toe into music with her band Selena Gomez and The Scene.
Of course, that chapter eventually led to the former child star breaking out on her own with solo albums like 2013’s Stars Dance, 2015’s Revival and 2020’s Rare, as well as her current role as Mabel on Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building opposite Steve Martin and Martin Short.
However, Gomez still has even higher Hollywood ambitions in her sights, saying, “I want to work with a David Fincher or a David O. Russell, who will push me to the edge to go and fight for something. That’s the kind of acting that I crave to do more than anything.”
Listen to Gomez’s full interview on Awards Chatter below.
Source: billboard.com
