Francia Raisa is opening up about how she and Selena Gomez overcame their friendship drama.
“I’ll be honest, we didn’t speak for a year,” Raisa, 35, told Today.com in an interview published on Tuesday, October 31, noting she stopped talking to Gomez, 31, after the premiere of her 2022 documentary, Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me, in which she was not featured. “I just was like, ‘I need my space.’”
Around the time of the film’s November 2022 release, Raisa seemingly shaded Gomez for calling Taylor Swift her “only friend” in Hollywood in a Rolling Stone cover story interview. “Interesting,” she commented on an Instagram post about the story, after which fans noticed she no longer followed Gomez via social media.
Gomez, for her part, clapped back via a TikTok comment, writing, “Sorry I didn’t mention every person I know.”
It wasn’t until July that the friends began speaking again and shut down feud speculation. Gomez, for her part, posted a sweet birthday tribute for Raisa via Instagram, while the Grown-ish alum told TMZ that there was “no beef” between her and Gomez.
According to Raisa, Gomez was not aware of some of the online gossip surrounding their friendship until they met for dinner in August. “I told her everything,” she explained. “I was like, ‘Girl, I don’t know who started that rumor that you ended up in rehab because I got mad or whatever.’ And she goes, ‘That’s a rumor?’ I said, ‘Oh, let me tell you about the last six years of my life.’ So there was just a lot of misunderstanding even with the whole documentary — we hashed all that out.”
Raisa also credits the pair’s shared Mexican heritage for helping them overcome their issues. Earlier this month, she teased her partnership with the salsa brand La Victoria by sharing a snap of herself and Gomez posing in a bowling alley wearing matching “no beef, just salsa” T-shirts.
“I used to bring her to my mom’s restaurant. I used to cook all the time. I made all this stuff and she requests it all the time,” she told Today.com. “So I’m really grateful that this, in particular, is what brought my friendship back together.”
Now, Raisa is excited for her and Gomez to push aside their past problems and “get to know each other” again. “Nice to meet you, this is a 35-year-old version of me. We’re not 22 anymore,” she joked.
Raisa reunited with her bestie at Gomez’s inaugural Rare Impact Fund Benefit on October 4, at which they both sported sparkling silver dresses. At the event, Raisa clarified in an interview with Extra TV that her and Gomez’s tiff had “nothing to do with the kidney,” referring to her donating her kidney to the “Rare” singer in 2017.
“Sometimes, I feel people need to spend time apart in order to grow,” she added. “We had to almost go on our own journey and grow.”
