Selena Gomez looks back on 2017 kidney transplant

Selena Gomez and Francia Raisa have a long history. (Photo: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

Selena Gomez, who underwent a kidney transplant in 2017, is once again speaking out about how much How I Met Your Father actress Francia Raisa having donated a kidney to her has meant.

“I will never ever, ever be more in debt to a person than Francia,” Gomez said on Friday’s episode of Dear…, an Apple TV+ series that profiles “game-changing icons,” including activist Malala Yousafzai and the late Vogue editor André Leon Talley. “The idea of someone not even second-guessing to be a donor was unbelievably overwhelming.”

The Only Murders in the Building star recalled that one moment her “best friend” said she would get tested to see if she was a potential match, and it seemed like the next — actually three days later — they were given the medical green light.

“It was one of those moments where I felt watched over,” said Gomez, who needed the transplant as a result of her struggle with lupus. “I know I was so, so, so lucky. I understand that that doesn’t happen for a lot of people and I know the outcome of some of those situations and how serious they are, so I do not take it lightly that it’s happened to me that way.”

Gomez, who’s also been open about her mental health, documented the date of her transplant with a tattoo that matches one belonging to Raisa.

Although it’s unclear when the episode was filmed, it aired roughly four months after speculation that the two were on bad terms. Gomez said in a November 2022 interview with Rolling Stone that Taylor Swift was “my only friend in the industry really,” and Raisa reportedly commented “interesting” on an Instagram post about the quote, to which Gomez later responded, “Sorry I didn’t mention every person I know.”

The women were rumored years earlier to have disagreed over some of Gomez’s “unhealthy choices,” then to have become close again. (Raisa told Yahoo Life in July that she had to adjust her own diet after the operation.)

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But there shouldn’t be any question as to where Gomez stands now.

“I think that it had to happen the way that it did in order for me to get to where I am,” Gomez said of the transplant on the show. “I was meant to go through it to do something for others.”

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