I Need to Apologize For Everything I’ve Said About Selena Gomez

2024 was kind of a rough year online for Selena Gomez. It was also a rough year for everyone else in the world, but that’s not what we’re talking about today. Today, we are talking about Selena Gomez and the things I said about her in 2024.

In 2024, you see, Selena Gomez starred in Emilia Pérez, one of the most critically reviled Oscar-winning movies of all time. (It won for Best Original Song and Best Supporting Actress.) Selena Gomez did not receive an Oscar nomination, despite many people predicting that she would. 

I was not one of those people. Indeed, I said that she didn’t deserve an Oscar nomination because her accent while speaking in Spanish was so atrocious. Now, you might say that this was harsh, but I would counter that, at the time, it was justified. As a gringo who is now living in Peru, I’m aware that it’s difficult to minimize my accent while speaking Spanish. The problem is that I have a justification: I am a gringo who still can’t remember the word for “vacuum cleaner.” Selena Gomez’s character, on the other hand, was only barely given a justification for her accent, and only after the director of Emilia Pérez realized that Gomez couldn’t speak Spanish in the first place. I was upset that the director didn’t just choose a native Mexican for the role instead of coming up with the flimsy excuse. 

In any case, I allowed my frustration with the director’s choices to cloud my judgment of Gomez’s performance, which was just fine. Maybe it wasn’t as scintillating as Zoë Saldaña’s, but it was pretty good considering that she was speaking in a language that she hadn’t used since she was a child. Also, it was just really popular to make fun of Emilia Pérez in 2024 and early 2025, since the Internet is packed to the brim with opinionated, perpetually offended attention seekers who criticize anyone with more talent, money, or fame than them. (I’ve done it; you’ve done it; we’ve all done it; but the Internet is the room where it happens.) Anyway, I allowed my criticism of the movie to extend to Gomez.

Then, high on the drug that is forming impulsive, self-centered Internet criticism, I also began to examine Gomez’s other works. I began to see Only Murders in the Building as a lopsided Steve Martin and Martin Short vehicle in which Gomez stuck out like a sore thumb. I saw her as an energy vampire, sucking tension and amusement from every scene with her monotone line readings. I complained about this to anyone who would listen for several minutes in early 2025. Several minutes! I was nearly blacklisted by my own boyfriend.

But now we are in late 2025. I’ve taken several long breaks from social media and I refuse to engage in conversations dominated by clout-seeking blowhards — both in person and online. With so many real existential problems facing the planet, I just don’t see the point in directing my frustration at non-problematic celebrities anymore. Isn’t it jealousy, after all, that leads us to do this? Shouldn’t we be angrier at the faceless, greedy misers who influence global politics and the global economy, pushing our species to the brink of extinction?

Also, Selena Gomez is great in Only Murders in the Building! In the current Season 5, it’s more apparent than ever that her subdued line deliveries are not only dripping in nuance, but a necessary foil to Martin and Short. If the show featured three high energy clowns yelling at each other for 30 minutes every week, we’d all lose patience. I don’t know why I ever doubted the talent she displayed on screen. Well, yes, I do know why. I just spent this entire essay explaining that. 

But there’s also something specifically great about Gomez in Season 5 that makes her performance this season stand out. She has a spark to her, and it appears to be a deliberate choice. Her character, like many others in their early 30s, is reaching a point of satisfaction with her life, and it shows in her spirited witticisms and reactions. She’s also more animated thanks to the presence of her frenemy Thē, who unconsciously pushes her to become a better version of herself.

In other words, Selena Gomez is great at her job, and my opinion about her does not matter. It has never mattered. The world keeps spinning. The celebrities that we talk about rarely read these things. And yet, I still apologize for everything I said about Selena Gomez. I still want to put that energy out into the world.