Review: 'Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me'

"Everything I've ever wished for, I've had. And done all of it. But it has killed me"

One of my oldest friends is someone I've known since we were both standup comics back in the 1980s. We were part of a group of 6-7 people who hung out together, pushing each other to be better, spending late nights drinking coffee at Perkins and dreaming about what we'd do when we were famous. 

A couple of us ended up in the writing side of the business, with one of us a now pretty-well known showrunner. And a couple of other friends in the group have some more tangential show biz connection. But one of us became an actual star. He's very well-known, maybe best described as an "almost A-lister." He has this public persona of being a naturally funny, acerbic and confident guy. Okay, sometimes he comes off as a bit of an asshat (and I honestly say that with love). He's super talented. But he became a star when a couple of very random things broke his way. Things he had no control over and that randomness is something which weighs on him. He is a guy who outwardly appears as if he has it all. But after a couple of decades he's still wracked with self-doubt and fear.

When I heard last year that one of our group had killed himself after suffering a series of personal losses, my phone rang late one night and without looking, I knew who it was. It was my friend, grieving for our loss. But that grief was intertwined with the lamentation that has been part of his psyche since he became famous. "Why me and not X?"

Fame and success always has a cost. Sometimes it's emotional, sometimes it is the things you discard along the way. But celebrity is by its nature an artifice, and it's easy to find yourself living inside this bubble of fame and money that protects you, but also doesn't give you what you need to thrive.

That's especially the case when you're talking about someone who came into fame at an early age. None of us have any clear sense of the person we'll eventually become when we're in our teens. Going through that discovery process in public - while also wrangling with all of the career challenges - is brutal and unforgiving and even the strongest person can falter and sometimes lose their way. Doing some reporting about teen show producer Dan Schneider, I've had the chance to speak to a number of men and women who became stars in their teens. And I can't think of one who didn't battle demons along the way.

I wasn't sure what to make of Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me before I saw it. I knew that she was doing the documentary willingly, and that it was a six year project between the performer and Truth Or Dare director Alek Keshishian. He filmed the 2015 music video for Gomez's "Hands To Myself" and is coincidentally her manager's brother. Based on that personal relationship and the fact Apple TV+ would provide a screener of the documentary only for purposes of a feature story and not a review made me suspect this would be another one of those tightly-controlled films that is much a brand exercise as it is look behind the curtain.

But I was so, so wrong.

Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me is a staggeringly intimate look at someone who is the middle of a physical and mental collapse. It begins in the midst of rehearsals for her 2016 Revival tour, which she canceled midway through due to a mental health crisis. Over the next several years, Gomez spends time in a mental health facility, deals with a flare-up of Lupus that ends up requiring her to get a kidney transplant, and on top of all of that, she's diagnosed with a bipolar-disorder diagnosis. 

When the cameras return, Gomez is battling anxiety and stage fright. She frankly seems more than a little lost and given what she's going through, I would likely feel the same way.

But as the documentary progresses, you can see Gomez slowly find her equilibrium. She travels to Kenya and volunteers at a local school. Focusing on other people, lost in the moment, you can see her soul just smile and for all of the joy in that moment, it's also so sad. Because it's clear that sometimes there just are not enough of those moments.

There is one sequence that as a journalist made me squirm in near agony. My nightmare is asking someone a question or series of questions that are painfully uninformed or just odd and awkward. So watching a press tour journalist ask Gomez: "One DJ, one word: Marshmello," made me embarrassed for my entire profession.

Keshishian does a masterful job of stripping the glitz and celebrity from every scene Gomez is in. She trusts him enough to let the camera see her at some of the worst, rawest moments anyone can imagine. And it's even more jarring because Gomez's public persona is being someone who is cool to the point of almost being distant. She is always perfectly presented and watching her walk through a room, it's impossible to imagine her having a bad hair day much less battling demons that would crush most of us. 

In fact, that image is one of the reasons why she is so good in Hulu's Only Murders In The Building. In the series, she plays someone who seems cool and detached from the world. But as the show plays out, you begin to see all of the things she hides from others and from herself. It's a character that fits the world's image of Gomez, whether or not it's truly accurate.

That dichotomy plays out on a larger scale in Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me. She wants to connect in ways that are difficult for her to manage. Especially someone who is a star of her stature. She sees herself through other people's eyes and as they see her - this strong, talented, together woman - and that doesn't match the way she often feels inside. There are scenes where you see her yearning for peace and happiness in a visceral way that almost physically hurts to watch. And yet, for whatever reason she decided to bare herself for the world. And it feels like the process of making the film helped solidify some things in her life.

I don't want to talk too much about specific moments that take place later in the documentary or how it wraps up. But it appears that Gomez is a better place now and on a human level, I am happy for her. 

Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me is an incredibly intimate and brave film. I suspect seeing Gomez in such an unfiltered way might help some other young women battling similar self-doubts. I also suspect that might be part of the reason why Gomez decided to do the documentary. And that decision might tell you the most important thing you need to know about Selena Gomez.

Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me premiered Friday, November 4th, 2022 on Apple TV+