Selena Gomez: Actress, singer, beauty mogul

24:31It happens with sports stars as well. If you think about it like McEnroe, there comes a point in saying, I've taken you so far. And actually, I'm pretty ill-equipped to deal with the level of fame that you've now achieved. Yeah, exactly. You know, parental feelings come in, they can interfere and things can get messy. Yeah. In 2016, Selena was back on the road again, this time to promote her second solo album, Revival. New album, new energy and a new label, Interscope. So couldn't get a bit more further away from Disney than Interscope. Very famous for being hip hop kind of music label. Yeah. So this revival tour was meant to be this new chapter in her life, like a full reboot of that music career after years of health battles.

25:14But just like her first solo tour, it really didn't go the distance. So three months in while she was in New Zealand, Selena pulled the plug on the whole thing. She shared publicly that she was struggling with anxiety, panic attacks and depression, things that she says were side effects of her lupus. And she said, I know I'm not alone. By sharing this, I hope others will be encouraged to address their own issues. The tour by then had brought in over$30 million in ticket sales. And it did nothing to slow down her star power, because in 2016, she became the most followed person on Instagram, 103 million followers at the time, edging out close friend and another one of our billionaires, Taylor Swift.

25:53Beating Taylor Swift on social media is no mean feat. Yeah. I mean, I think this is a really interesting kind of inflection point in pop star celebrity because, and I know now Taylor Swift seems completely untouchable in the same way that Beyonce is completely untouchable, but you have moments in some pop stars careers where they really weren't just on top and there were lots of people coming up behind them to snatch the crown. Like Selena Gomez could have become one of those people. It's actually strange that Selena isn't even bigger than she already is. You know, as we talk she's got a new album coming out with her fiancee benny blanco maybe that will be the thing that pushes her finally to the top tier yeah but you know i do think her health conditions have been the kind of thing that have maybe held her back from becoming a total global superstar interesting held her back or enhanced her appeal to a generation who who basically welcomed the idea that mental health issues physical health issues whatever were difficult for everyone and and you are actually struggling because Taylor Swift comes across as kind of almost like an Amazonian queen.

26:57She's very strong. And with Selena Gomez, it's a slightly different message, which I would say channels into quite a lot of people's experiences. Yeah, it's an interesting debate. I do feel like if you want to make a lot of money, and this is what I learned from our Taylor episode, if you want to make a lot of money in music and you want to do it through touring and your actual music, you have to be an absolute machine. You can't stop touring. You can't stop making new music. You can't take a break in the way that Selena has. But Selena's found, as we'll see later on in the episode, a different way to make those billions.

27:30Yeah. And of course, the brands, the brands, the brands, the brands, of course, paying attention. Anyone who's got over 100 million followers on any social media platform in the attention economy, as it's called, you are hot property. Exactly. Selena locked in deals of brands like Coach, of Louis Vuitton. Each one was reportedly worth$10 million. And the following year, she had a partnership for$30 million with Puma Sports Brand. So making serious bank of brands. And then in 2017, Selena shocked the world again with an Instagram post that went viral. She revealed she'd undergone a kidney transplant due to complications from lupus and that her best friend, actress Francia Raisa, had been the one to donate hers.

28:13The photo pictured Selena and Francia holding hands in their hospital beds. a pretty raw shot of Selena's post-surgery scar. And that post alone racked up over 10 million likes. Yeah. So quite the kind of disclosure, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. And in 2018, Selena announced that she was actually stepping away from social media altogether. Not long after she quietly entered another mental health treatment facility. Yeah. And then in 2018, Selena's mum, Mandy, remember she's been fired as her kind of manager. Her mum gets a call, but it's not from Selena, is from the tabloid press and they are asking, why is your daughter in the hospital with a nervous breakdown?

28:53Well, Mandy was blindsided. She later said, Selena didn't want anything to do with me and I was scared she was going to die. Meanwhile, Selena's mental health had taken a terrifying turn. Things had escalated. She was hearing voices. She'd experienced an episode of psychosis. Now, Selena says she doesn't remember much from this time, but she does know that she spent several months in a treatment facility. She was paranoid. She couldn't trust anyone. and at her lowest she was saying she didn't want to be alive and there were real fears that she might never recover. And it was around this time that doctors diagnosed her with bipolar disorder and for Selena that diagnosis finally made everything else click.

29:32The crushing lows, the manic highs, all of it suddenly made sense. She later told Rolling Stone there were times she couldn't sleep for nights in a row, times she felt she needed to buy a car for everyone she knew and then there were the crashes weeks, months sometimes when she couldn't get out of bed. I didn't want anyone to talk to me, she said. And while this diagnosis brought her some clarity, the treatment itself was anything but smooth. So Selena was prescribed multiple medications, some of which left her feeling like a ghost, she said. Eventually there was a new psychiatrist who stepped in, cut back most of her meds and slowly Selena said she began to feel human again.

30:08And it's not the only thing she retraced because she also reconnected with her mum and stepdad, the very people she once pushed away. Yeah, she also opened up about the actual toll it took on her. She says, I had to learn how to remember certain words. I'd forget where I was in the middle of conversations. It took a lot of hard work. First, I said that I was bipolar. And second, I learned to actually live with it because it's not going away. And she goes public with her bipolar diagnosis in April 2020 on an episode, funnily enough, of Miley Cyrus's lockdown Instagram live series, Bright Minded.

30:42So, you know, brave move. The language around all of this has changed. Back in Judy Garland's era, 100 years ago nearly, you know, she was going through stuff, having mental breakdowns and depression. The studios would never have dreamt of allowing people to know that at the time. Yeah, she would never have been allowed to talk about it. But I think what's so interesting about Selena opening up about this is that, you know, having bipolar disorder is still a highly stigmatized condition. Not a lot of people know very much about it. You know, it's still kind of seen as this disorder that makes you really erratic, untrustworthy.

31:17It's seen as a kind of debilitating, severe illness. Right. Whereas I feel like the mental health conversations now, we've managed to destigmatise a lot of stuff around anxiety and depression. But bipolar disorder is one of those conditions, I think, that is still kind of falling behind. So that's interesting. So that you would put that in a separate category. Exactly. So I do think genuinely this was a brave thing for her to do. Yeah. And around this time, we sort of see a shift in her herself, a kind of political awakening maybe. Yeah, definitely. Like she opened up about her family history.

31:49You know, she told people that her paternal grandparents were undocumented when they came to the US. That is actually a really big deal, given how politically loaded that issue is. And she also executive produced a Netflix documentary series called Living Undocumented, which spotlights the stories of immigrant families facing deportation. Also during the Black Lives Matter movement, she handed over her Instagram account, which was, you know, one of the most followed in the world to black activists so they could share their voices and reach millions directly. So, you know, a real pivot, I would say.

32:20It's quite a thing to give away. We talk about the attention economy being worth millions, probably even billions. Hundreds of billions, I would say. Yeah. So that is a very powerful thing to do. We've talked a lot about her personal journey. Let's talk about the money. Yes, let's. That's why we're here in many ways. Because that same year, 2020, Selena decided to launch a beauty brand with a mission baked right into its DNA, which was about supporting mental health. and it's called Rare Beauty. I was talking to my daughter about this and saying, Selena Gomez, and whereas my wife fell off a chair thinking, she's a billionaire, my daughter had no problem believing that and said, it must be Rare Beauty.

32:57It's so popular and so it is. But she's combined that with some of the previous issues we've talked about because 1 % of all Rare Beauty sales go directly to Selena's Rare Impact Fund charity with the goal of raising$100 million over the next 10 years for mental health organisations. And even the names of the products nod to these kind of, you know, popular affirmations. Stay vulnerable, liquid eyeshadow, always an optimist eye primer, with gratitude lip balm. I mean, I'm kind of a cynic, so I don't think I will be reaching for the with gratitude lip balm anytime soon. It's a long way from the power suits and the makeup of the 1980s, where it was all about projecting power.

33:36Right. The brand itself actually, you know, to counter all the cynicism, says it's about breaking down unrealistic standards of perfection. But obviously, if you're a cynic, you'll agree with Time Magazine's assessment, which is that there's a tension here. Gomez and her team are managing to sell millions of dollars worth of product while also promoting the idea that no one needs makeup. Buy this makeup you don't need. She was quick to respond, though, saying, I hope I don't and I hope Rare Beauty doesn't give off the vibe that you have to do anything. And when it comes to that double standard, people being judged for showing imperfections and wearing too much makeup.

34:14She said in more BBC-friendly terms, well, she said, it's rubbish. Let's put it that way. So Rare Beauty joins a very crowded market for celebrity beauty brands, including a few that've made some of our previous billionaires on the show very wealthy. So Kim Kardashian's Skin and Rihanna's Fenty Beauty. But this is not a problem. Rare Beauty seems to be more than holding its own against those brands. In 2022, it sells$70 million worth of its best-selling blusher. And it raised five million for the Rare Impact Fund. And Selena also co-founded a mental health platform called Wonder Mind alongside her mum Mandy and Daniela Pearson.

34:52What is this kind of thing? Well, it calls itself a mental fitness ecosystem. So break it down. It's mental health tools, it's podcasts, interviews, newsletters. It's all aimed at helping people build healthy habits around their mental well-being. This isn't just a passion project, though. It's a business. It is because in 2022, WonderMind was valued at a cool$100 million and had backing from big names like Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital. Now, in my world, Sequoia Capital, if you got the backing of Sequoia Capital, these are people who've backed some of the biggest internet businesses in history.

35:27Even tennis legend Serena Williams has her own capital fund called Serena Ventures. So she's in as well. But apparently the mental health startup market is worth$5.5 billion in 2021, which seems like so much money. Yeah, there is a massive commercial opportunity in doing for mental health what medical technology has done for physical health. So it's an enormous hit of potential money. Yeah, what's the GlaxoSmithKline of mental health, basically? Well, I mean, GlaxoSmithKline would probably tell you that they are all over that too. But importantly, you know, she's not just doing Wonder Mind. She hasn't actually left acting behind.

36:08Selena began starring in a Hulu TV show, Only Murders in the Building, in 2021. She stars as a podcaster, so a girl after our own hearts. And it also paid off, both literally and figuratively. She earned her first ever Emmy nomination for acting in 2024, later a Golden Globe nod to. Yeah, she stars in all four seasons of the show. it's estimated she's earning at least$6 million per season. And that's not including her extra pay as an executive producer. And you know from ever watching the credits for any successful thing, there are lots of executive producers. Exactly. Very important people in the business.

36:44In 2022... We love our own, by the way. We love our own exec producers and producers. In 2022, Selena revealed her most vulnerable work yet. She actually took audiences behind the scenes of this mental health journey with a very raw and unfiltered documentary called Selena Gomez, My Mind and Me. Now, important to know this footage wasn't originally even meant to tell this story. So it's directed by a guy called Alec Kashishian. He's the same guy who made an iconic documentary called Madonna, Truth or Dare back in the 90s. He had set out to film this kind of behind the scenes, lighthearted look at the revival tour, you know, this post-Disney reinvention.

37:21And Alec realised while filming that something was just really off. So he later said she was not in a great place. She was so young, remember, at the time she was in her very early 20s. So he stopped filming. And then years later, they both decided to come back to that footage and weave it into my mind and me. Now, Selena actually later admitted she actually almost pulled the plug completely. She told Rolling Stone, because I have the platform I have, it's kind of like I'm sacrificing myself a bit for a greater purpose. God's honest truth, a few weeks ago, I wasn't sure I could do it. Yeah. I mean, these days, Selena deals with some of the intense spotlight by pulling back when she says she needs to.

37:59That includes from social media. She's spoken openly about how toxic the comments can get. In a 2021 interview, she revealed she'd actually handed over the reins of her social media accounts to her assistant. That's not unusual, I don't think, in that world. She still provides the photos and the captions, but she rarely posts directly. Still, that hasn't slowed down her popularity. In 2023, Selena became the first woman to reach 400 million followers on Instagram. Yeah. I'm a cynic about this stuff, I have to say, which is that if Selena Gomez was to come out and say, I'm absolutely fine. No one needs to worry about me ever again.

38:37All is well. Would interest, would her capital in the attention economy diminish somewhat? I mean, I kind of feel some sympathy for the people who have grown up famous. And I know you shouldn't because they've had everything handed to them on a silver plate and they've been earning money since they were in kind of baby prams. But if you've only ever grown up in the public eye and you are on social media, both as a person and as a personality, I actually think the lines are really blurred. So while you and I might kind of go through a month and think, oh, I hate Instagram. I just want to leave.

39:12I'm just going to leave. Nobody's going to notice or care. But if Selena wants to do it, it becomes a huge deal. Yeah. I'm really torn because part of me says, okay, you've got plenty of money. You've got a billion dollars. If it can be that risky to be in the public eye that much, where sometimes you like it and sometimes you don't, just don't do it. Take your money and go. I feel like every single person on the face of the earth. Celebrities are just as addicted to being online as we are. All right. But meanwhile, the real guts of her wealth, the reason she's even on our list is her beauty empire, which is booming.

39:48By 2024, Rare Beauty is valued at a staggering$2 billion. Even whispers reported by Bloomberg, very credible financial news outfit that Selena had hired advisors to explore a possible sale. but just a few months later she told Time magazine she had no plans to sell. I just wonder what a beauty brand founded by Selena Gomez without her involved is really worth the same amount of money. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I'm sure if she did sell the company she would stay on as the kind of... Creative director. Exactly. Creative consultant. They would invent a role for her to stay on as the face of it.

40:23But because it's a private company, you know, it's not listed on Stock Exchange, the full financial picture of Rare Beauty isn't actually public. Analysts estimate that it brings in about$350 and$400 million in annual sales. But with only a couple of known investors, including Niki Eslami's New Theory Ventures and CEO Scott Friedman, who previously sold NYX Cosmetics, another huge beauty brand, to L 'Oreal, the Bloomberg analysts assume that Selena holds a majority stake of 51%, which is important. Yeah. And as we've said, that is how, in September 2024, Selena Gomez enters a whole new league.

41:01She's officially listed on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index for the very first time with an estimated net worth of$1.3 billion.

41:20And just breaking that down, 81 % of that,$1.1 billion, is derived from her stake in Rare Beauty. 19 % comes from endorsements with all sorts of people touring, mental health platform, record sales, acting 1.3%. There you go. And record sales 1.8%. So acting and record sales combined 3 % of her worth. Well, actually, I think what's really interesting is how much streaming contributes to her wealth. So streaming accounts for 0.7 % of her fortune. Think about it. This is a girl who is on Disney Records, who's had multiple albums, who's featured on loads of other artists' tracks. She's probably got millions, if not billions of streams, and that is less than 1 % of her wealth.

42:07Anyone below the top 5 % gets very little compared to the old days of album sales. So Selena Gomez, Disney darling to Beauty Mogul to Mental Health Advocate, all just at 32 years old. I mean, God, she's... Wow, 32, and she's done all that. I think we will be hearing a lot more from Selena in the years to come. She's got a long way to go. She's got several more billions to make. You think so? Okay, we'll see. Okay, I reckon her profile will decline over the next 10 years. I can see a future in which someone like LVMH buys Rare Beauty. Okay, the same people who own 50 % of Fenty Beauty. Exactly, and they pay her to just stay on as the creative director.

42:44I'm going to put a bet on it now. Okay, done.

42:50Well, at 32, she's been through a lot, but we have to judge her now. And this is where we judge our billionaires by a variety of categories from 0 to 10 on things like wealth, villainy, philanthropy, power, etc, etc. And we always start with wealth. So you go first. So, you know, she is worth about$1.3 billion. Selena used to live in the$5 million former home of the American rock musician Tom Petty with her grandparents, though it's reported that she and her fiancé, Benny Blanco, bought a kind of big Beverly Hills mansion for$35 million in December of 2024. And presumably that's where she is. Yeah.

43:30So she's spending money, but she's not really in the big leagues of billionaires. And also she doesn't seem that kind of blingy. It's not like fly out my nails assistant, you know, on a private jet. I don't know, it doesn't seem that way to me. Interestingly, like a lot of her album promo, you know, the album artwork, the music videos, she's just in an oversized T-shirt. Yeah. I mean, kind of like, you know, casual, down to earth. That's kind of her vibe. But I will say, I think she scores a little bit higher for me in this category because of the journey that her and her family have been on. Essentially raised by a single teenage mom.

44:06Yeah. Grew up, you know, not very well off at all. Yeah. Kind of took a big punt to becoming a Disney Channel star. Worked hard for that. So I think for me, her journey to where she is now, to a billionaire, pushes her up the league of wealthy people. Usually I give her, in terms of pure wealth, I give her a one. But I'm going to give her a four. Yeah, I'm going to be slightly more generous and give her a five out of ten. Okay, four for me, five for you. What about villainy? This is when we look at, you know, what people have done to get to the top. And we've had some real wrong-uns in there. she doesn't paint a particularly villainous picture to me.

44:41What do you think? No, there have been some big kind of controversies, I guess, in recent years. So, you know, there was this Woody Allen comedy called A Rainy Day in New York. She acted in that, even though he's faced allegations that he sexually abused his then seven-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, in 1992. Allen, for the record, has always denied these allegations. But Selena and her co-stars from that film ended up donating their salaries to charities, including Time's Up, after Dylan Farrell, now grown up, kind of renewed the allegations around the time of the film's release. Yeah.

45:15Okay, so what are you going to give her for villainy? How, you know... Is she a bad woman? No, she's made some bad acting choices. That's not really villainy, is it? That's not villainy. That's just bad advice from your agent. Or just, you know, just taking a punt on something that doesn't work out. I'm going to give a zero on villainy. Yeah, I'm going to give her... Unless you believe that she mobilises mental health as a promotional tool. But, you know, she's had some well-documented brushes with really serious conditions like lupus, for example, bipolar disorder. And she has contributed to seminars.

45:54So she's put a little bit back in. So she's been a useful input into that process. But I'm going to give a zero for villainy. Yeah, I'll give her a zero. All right, so we both gave zero on villainy, which means giving back what she'd done philanthropically. Yeah, so she's obviously pledged 1 % of all Rare Beauty sales to the Rare Impact Fund. In 2022, in their social impact report, the company said it's already raised$5 million out of its$100 million aim, $2 million of which had already been donated to 16 organisations around the world. And for each episode of her cooking show, Selina and Chef, the show makes a$10 ,000 donation to a charitable cause.

46:32In the first three seasons,$400 ,000 to 26 non-profit organisations. Yeah, that's pretty interesting as well. Rare Beauty also made donations of an undisclosed amount to the Bell Project, which is a criminal justice project in America, and the NAACP's Legal Defence Fund during the Black Lives Matter protests. Yeah. You add all that up and I know she wants to raise$100 million. I see$5 million so far and probably another million elsewhere, less than half of 1 % of her wealth. So, I mean, it all sounds well-meaning. It doesn't add up to a whole lot just yet. I'm going to give her a four on this one.

47:13Yeah. I mean, I think I'd agree. It's not a very efficient way of distributing those funds, is it? Yeah. And also 1 % of sales to the impact fund. I don't know. That sounds more like the dividing line between people will buy that because they're thinking it's a philanthropic exercise, but it's not high enough to be that generous. So I'm going to give a very guarded three on philanthropy. Right. I will give her, I kind of feel, I'm kind of torn on this one. Isn't she more useful philanthropically in kind of who she is rather than what she does, what she gives? That's a good point. Yeah. In terms of what kind of awareness she raises for various causes, I think I'd be more generous.

47:57I'd give her a four out of ten. Okay, three and a four. And in a way, what we've just discussed bleeds into the category of power. She's got 421 million followers on Instagram. I mean, that's a meaningful chunk of the entire world's population. Yeah. And if you could get 0.01 % of them to support a cause or buy a product, that's a lot of power. She was very important in the Black Lives Matter movement. Very interesting to see where the Selena Gomez character goes in Donald Trump's America. Undocumented Mexican immigrant grandparents handing over your platform to Black Lives Matter during the George Floyd moment.

48:36All of those things, you know, sensitive issues in Trump's America right now. It's going to be quite interesting. I actually think this is something she is probably grappling with at this very moment, because I know that when Donald Trump got elected or inaugurated, she posted quite tearfully on her social media accounts, basically saying, you know, my grandparents were undocumented. What is going on with this country? And she kind of came under fire from some right wing media commentators for that. She deleted the post, probably because, you know, a whole lot of hate was directed towards her after she got kind of told off in that way.

49:12But I wouldn't put it past her to in the next year or so to come out with something a lot more considered and thought out. OK. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because she also she kind of fell short of officially endorsing Biden in 2020. In 2024, she kind of posted a picture and a video of herself posting her election ballot on Instagram and TikTok. She kind of didn't say who she was voting for, but there was a blue heart emoji, which many took to imply supporting Kamala Harris. okay so you know she's not really pushed herself out there okay on power i'm going to give a quite high score i mean anyone with nearly half a billion followers on instagram is pretty powerful so i'm going to give her in the modern world a solid seven on that one well actually funnily enough i would agree with your seven yeah because i don't think she could pick up the phone to the white house no way yeah okay so seven seven we got to decide whether she's good bad and last year's billionaire.

50:05This one's an easy one for me. She's not a bad person, is she? So I'm going to say she's a good billionaire. Yeah, I would say if she hadn't done all that stuff around mental health awareness, spoken about being bipolar, you know. She would be just another billionaire. She would just be another billionaire. For sure. But for me, that is the stuff that edges her into being a good billionaire. Okay. Congratulations, Salim. You'll be very grateful to know that you have been passed as a good billionaire by the good, bad billionaire team.

50:41So, who is next week? So it's former Marvel CEO and chairman Ike Polmutter, the notoriously media-shy billionaire who brought the comics company back from the brink of ruin and helped launch the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And for someone in showbiz, he is surprisingly camera-shy. Ike even went to Iron Man's 2008 premiere, disguised in glasses and a fake moustache, but where he really stands out is making a profit from other people's mistakes. That's on the next episode of Good Bad Billionaire. Thanks for joining us. You've been listening to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. This episode was produced by Louise Morris.

51:17Our researcher was Annie Rose Harrison-Dutton. And our editor, Paul Smith.

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