Selena Gomez on why she attaches a “charity aspect” to everything she does

Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Global Citizen VAX LIVE

Selena Gomez is the cover star for the first ever Latinx issue of ELLE magazine.

In the interview, she opens up about how making it her purpose to help others helped get her through some tough times.

“My lupus, my kidney transplant, chemotherapy, having a mental illness, going through very public heartbreaks— these were all things that honestly should have taken me down,” she says.

But Selena says she survived by telling herself, “You’re going to help people.”

“That’s really what kept me going,” she says. “There could have been a time when I wasn’t strong enough, and would have done something to hurt myself.”

Now, the 29-year-old says everything she’s attached to — including her HBO Max show Selena + Chef and her cosmetics line Rare Beauty — has “a charity aspect. …If something good isn’t coming out of it, I’m not going to do it,” she says.

Elsewhere in the interview, Selena clarifies a previous comment she made about retiring from music soon. She says that while she does feel like she has a lot of prove sometimes, she doesn’t think she’ll ever quit making music.

Her new Hulu show, Only Murders in the Building, debuts out August 31.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.