A new decade, a new Selena Gomez: Back with a new album, the pop star goes deep on immigration activism, Latin identity, and her favourite karaoke song, with questions from the likes of Timothee Chalamet, Jim Jarmusch, and Yara Shahidi—plus, her biggest fans in the world
Natascha Elena Uhlmann: Thank you for your vulnerability in sharing your own family’s experiences with immigration. My family has felt the pain of borders and it terrifies me how hostile the world has become since then. How do you balance the importance of sharing our experiences with the system—giving it a human face—with fear of putting our loved ones at risk?
Selena Gomez: It’s definitely frightening, but I think sometimes you have to do the things that scare you in order to shake people up. My goal was to simply humanise my people, because they were being called aliens, criminals, and I can’t even imagine what these kids being separated from their families are going through. It’s something that is going to traumatise them for the rest of their lives. And it just seems animalistic; it is scary but I think it needs to be talked about, so that’s where my heart was coming from when I signed on to do a project (Living Undocumented) that addressed such a big issue.
Read the full interview here.