In 2017 Selena Gomez announced that she had undergone a kidney transplant that she desperately needed due to lupus complications. She was able to get the life-saving organ transplant in just a matter of days thanks to a kidney donation from her close friend Francia Raisa. At the time it seemed like the bond over this experience would last a lifetime, but now it looks like they’re no longer even talking to each other.
Last November (2022,) Selena gave an interview to Rolling Stone where she shared that she felt she only had one friend in the industry. The greater context of the comment was Selena musing about how she struggled with feelings of alienation, lack of identity, and self hatred.
“I never fit in with a cool group of girls that were celebrities,” she said. “My only friend in the industry really is Taylor [Swift], so I remember feeling like I didn’t belong. I felt the presence of everyone around me living full lives. I had this position, and I was really happy, but … was I? Do these materialistic things make me happy? [I realized] I just didn’t like who I was, because I didn’t know who I was.”
Francia Raisa is an actress who appears in Grown-ish and How I Met Your Father, so she found Selena’s comment about only having one friend in the industry “interesting.” She wrote the “interesting” comment on a social media post about Selena’s quote, and then quickly deleted it. She didn’t delete it in time to avoid a flurry of attention, though.
Selena and Francia did a joint interview with Savannah Guthrie in October, 2017 about their journey through their procedures. Francia said that she immediately volunteered to be tested for a match when she heard that the waiting time for a kidney can be 7-10 years.
“It just vomited out of me,” Francia said. “I said ‘Of course I’ll get tested.'”
Francia had been under the impression that she would be informed first if she was a match so she could take some time to consider this big decision. Instead, Selena was informed first and called Francia to tell her.
“One day I got a phone call from Selena and she’s like ‘we’re a match'” Francia said in 2018.
In May 2018 Francia opened up to Self about the fast process. She said she felt a lot of peace about the situation, but says that everything happened extremely fast and she wasn’t properly educated about what being a kidney donor really means.
Although she said she wasn’t properly informed about what was going to happen next, she did share that a social worker told her that the process was going to a lot worse for her than it was going to be for Selena, because she was losing something she didn’t need to lose while Selena was gaining something she needed.
Francia said both she and Selena fell into a depression after the surgery, and Selena’s recovery didn’t go as planned because the new kidney turned inside of her and broke an artery. Selena had to have another surgery where they took a vein out of her leg to build a wall around her artery.
There’s a rumor that Francia got upset with Selena when she was spotted drinking alcohol at the Four Seasons hotel in New York City in the summer of 2018 because she felt that Selena wasn’t taking good care of her new organ.
Most recently, Francia Raisa seemed to shade Selena to the paparazzi.
In the paparazzi footage, Francia dodged questions about whether or not she and Selena were still friends, and if Francia would ever follow Selena again on social media. At every question, Francia deflected by talking about the weather or the greenery in the area.
Francia did finally directly answer a question thrown at her by the pap. When asked if she would go through the process to donate a kidney again, she replied “I would definitely speak to someone again about organ donation and the process.”
She then related a story about someone who came up to her the other day to tell her about a friend who had been inspired by Francia to donate her kidney. “For all of that it’s worth it,” Francia said, which seemed to throw major shade at Selena since it would seem that donating a kidney to Selena would be what made it worth it if they were still on good terms.
With this answer she again expressed the concern that she had not been educated enough about what she was doing when she made the decision to give Selena her kidney.
Because of the random situation of this paparazzi interaction, many people are speculating that Francia arranged for this instead of it being a chance encounter.
In March, 2023 Selena expressed gratitude to Francia on an episode of the Apple TV series “Dear . . .” where she called Francia her “best friend.”
She said that she would “will never ever, ever be more in debt to a person than Francia.”
