Selena Gomez and Francia Raisa met for the first time in 2007 when they were 15 and 19 respectively.
In a 2018 interview with W Magazine, Raisa said that she had met Gomez 11 years earlier at a Children’s Hospital event led by Disney and ABC Family.
“We were in the same group,” Raisa said. “We just kind of started talking.”
At the time, Gomez was known for playing Alex Russo in “Wizards of Waverly Place,” while Raisa was gearing up for the release of her teen drama, “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” Due to their similar circles, Raisa said that the two “just kept running into each other.
“One day she called me and was like, ‘Hey, I don’t have any friends. Why don’t we ever hang out?’ Then we’ve just been inseparable,” said Raisa.
Ten years after they became friends, they moved in together.
Gomez was diagnosed with lupus sometime between 2012 and early 2014. Lupus is an autoimmune disease that affects around 1.5 million people in America, according to the Lupus Foundation.
In 2017, Gomez discovered that she needed a kidney transplant due to complications from the disease. At the time, the “Bring It On: All or Nothing” star had moved in with Gomez.
“She said, ‘We can be homeless together,'” Raisa joked in her W Interview.
Soon after they began living together, Gomez’s health took a turn for the worse.
Remembering how the “Only Murders in the Building” star broke the news to her, Raisa said: “She was asking me about my day and she grabbed a water bottle out of the fridge and tried to open it and couldn’t. Then she threw it on the floor, and she fell to the floor and started crying.”
“I was like, ‘What is wrong with you?’ She said, ‘I need a new kidney. I don’t know what I’m going to do, the waitlist is seven to 10 years,'” Raisa continued.
“And it just came out of me, and I said, ‘I’ll get tested.’ I called her assistant behind her back to get the information, and that’s how the process started.”
Raisa turned out to be a match and on June 19, 2017, she underwent an organ transplant to donate her kidney to the former Disney star.
While the two friends initially kept the news of the surgery private, Gomez shared with her followers on September 14, 2017, the reason why she had been “laying low for part of the summer” and “wasn’t promoting my new music.”
Alongside a photo of herself and Raisa smiling at each and holding hands from adjacent hospital beds, Gomez wrote: “There aren’t words to describe how I can possibly thank my beautiful friend Francia Raisa. She gave me the ultimate gift and sacrifice by donating her kidney to me. I am incredibly blessed. I love you so much sis.”
In a since-deleted post, Raisa wrote that she was “beyond grateful that God would trust me with something that not only saved a life, but changed mine in the process.”
She added: “This was part of our story, and we will share it soon, but what is important now is that this is not the only story.”
Following the surgery, Gomez and Raisa got matching tattoos to commemorate the moment.
In an interview with Capital FM in December 2019, Gomez revealed that she inked the month and date she underwent her kidney transplant on her upper arm.
“I did that with the girl who gave me the kidney,” she said, explaining that Raisa has the same tattoo in the same placement.
Fans caught glimpses of the numerical design above Gomez’s right elbow during her “Rare” era, namely in music videos and press photos.
In a 2018 interview, Raisa revealed that Gomez was told that they were a good match for a transplant before she was.
“When I found out I was a match it wasn’t in the way I’d expected,” Raisa said in a video interview with Self, explaining that Gomez had found out from the doctors directly that they were a match for the operation before she was told.
Raisa said: “I had a way that I wanted to tell her when I made the decision. I knew it was going to happen, I just needed time.”
She went on to say that her social worker warned her about how difficult the process was going to be.
“She told me, ‘It’s gonna be hard. The recipient is gonna glow and she’s gonna recover a lot quicker than the donor is because she’s receiving something she needs. You’re losing something you don’t need to lose. It’s gonna be hard.’ And it was,” the actor said.
In November 2022, Gomez released her documentary, “My Mind & Me,” which featured several of her close friends. Raisa wasn’t mentioned at all.
The documentary, which was released on Apple TV+ on November 4, 2022, focuses on Gomez’s experience with mental illness and pulls the curtain back on the singer’s “psychotic break” that landed her in a hospital in 2018.
It featured several of Gomez’s close inner circle, most notably Raquelle Stevens, who is shown accompanying Gomez on trips to Kenya and France, as well as helping her through some difficult times.
Raisa, however, is never mentioned or shown in the 95-minute film, leading fans to believe that she and Gomez had fallen out.
Gomez said in an interview tied to the documentary’s release that Taylor Swift is her “only friend in the industry,” which Raisa found “interesting.”
In a Rolling Stone profile in November 2022, Gomez reflected on her fame and said she “never fit in with a cool group of girls that were celebrities,” adding that “my only friend in the industry really is Taylor [Swift].”
The quote was then included in an Instagram post shared by E! News, which Raisa reacted to by writing: “Interesting.”
She later deleted her comment but not before Pop Crave captured a screenshot.
The account also noted that Raisa had also stopped following the singer on Instagram. Gomez, meanwhile, still follows her.
As rumors began to circulate that the two had fallen out, Gomez commented on a TikTok video from a user breaking down the alleged drama.
“Sorry I didn’t mention every person I know,” the pop star wrote.
In March 2023, Gomez called Raisa her “best friend” and said she would never be more “in debt” to anyone else in an Apple TV+ series.
In the Apple TV+ docuseries “Dear…,” Gomez was among several celebrities who read letters from people inspired by their work.
In the Rare Beauty founder’s episode, which served as the season two finale, she called Raisa her “best friend” and gushed about her act of generosity.
“I will never ever, ever be more in debt to a person than Francia,” Gomez said, adding that Raisa did not even second-guess her decision to donate her kidney.
In April, Raisa dodged questions from a paparazzo about why she doesn’t follow Gomez back on social media and asked the singer’s fans to stop bullying her online.
In a video shared by TMZ that was recorded on April 30 and published a day later, Raisa refused to acknowledge questions about her and Gomez’s alleged falling out.
When directly asked why she unfollowed the “Another Cinderella Story” star on Instagram, she simply smiled and moved the conversation along.
In a follow-up video posted a week later, the “How I Met Your Father” actor told the pap that she was being “bullied” by Gomez’s fans in light of the first video, even though she did not respond to any questions about her and the singer’s friendship or rumored fallout.
“In no way shape or form does anyone condone bullying, especially Selena,” she said, before highlighting that the singer also founded an initiative to support mental health.
“She’s literally out there saying, ‘Please stop,’ so I don’t understand why it’s not stopping.”
In a recently resurfaced interview, Raisa’s father said that the two had a “disagreement” over the “Spring Breakers” star’s drinking habits.
In a November 2022 interview with the Spanish-language news program “Primer Impacto,” which resurfaced this week, Raisa’s father, radio personality Renán Almendárez Coello, who is known as “El Cucuy De La Mañana,” claimed that the two friends had a falling out because of Gomez’s drinking habits.
“There was a little disagreement when Selena was drinking. Francia told her that she wasn’t given a kidney to drink alcohol,” he said in Spanish.
After being asked by the interviewer if he had a message for Gomez, Coello said: “Take care, Mija. Be very careful. Life is beautiful.”
According to the National Kidney Foundation, it is advised that those who have been donated the organ drink alcohol in moderation, with women being advised to only drink one alcoholic beverage a day post-surgery.
Representatives for Gomez and Raisa have been contacted for comment.
