Selena Gomez reigns supreme as the most-followed woman on Instagram with 417 million followers. It’s a staggering number that’d be hard for anyone to really wrap their head around — including her.
The “Only Murders in the Building” and “Wizards Beyond Waverly Place” star and executive producer sat with Amy Poehler’s “Good Hang” podcast Tuesday and before long, a conversation about Gomez’s cooking show “Selena + Chef” led to her love of cooking TikToks which led to her gargantuan social media follower count.
“Tiktoks of people cooking, those are my favorite. I could just, I just appreciate it so much, and they’re so interesting from different cuisines around he world,” Gomez said.
“Do you go on TikTok?” Poehler responded incredulously. “Because that must be treacherous.”
“No, so, um — I actually haven’t been on TikTok,” Gomez admitted.
“That’s great,” Poehler said, before apologizing to the embattled social media platform.
“No, it’s OK. All social media platforms, I’m sure, hate me at this point because I’m always like, ‘Eh, I don’t know, it’s very, it can be scary,’” Gomez joked.
That’s when Poehler brought up Gomez’s record-setting Instagram following: “You have 400 million Instagram followers.”
“That doesn’t — it’s fine,” Gomez said, apparently clamming up. “Well, no — I’m just saying, I get so, like, awkward about that. Because it doesn’t, I don’t understand it sometimes. It’s just a very interesting thing.”
Watch the full interview below:
The actress, singer and entrepreneur emphasized, however, that social media is a tool she uses to connect with her fans, even while acknowledging that her reach continues to surprise her.
“I think it’s important for that element for me to have a connection with just my community. I’m not sure I’ll always be that way forever, but I think right now it’s been a great resource for me to connect with people,” Gomez said.
“I just love being able to say, ‘This is where I am, and I’m enjoying it.’ I’m willing to share that part of my life,” she concluded. “And maybe it’ll change, but I enjoy it.”
Earlier in the “Good Hang” episode, Poehler spoke with Gomez’s “Only Murders in the Building” co-star Martin Short who himself had nothing but raves for his colleague. He coincidentally praised her relationship with social media.
“It’s amazing, I’ve never seen her, I mean, she has literally like, I don’t know, 490 million Instagram followers — I’ve never seen her overrun by it all, collapsing from the pressure of it all,” he said.
Gomez has been open about her love-hate relationship with social media for years, previously sharing how she’s deleted Instagram off her phone and taken months-long breaks from the platform in an effort to protect her mental health.
“As soon as I became the most followed person on Instagram, I sort of freaked out,” she told Vogue in 2017. “It had become so consuming to me. It’s what I woke up to and went to sleep to … I was an addict, and it felt like I was seeing things I didn’t want to see, like it was putting things in my head that I didn’t want to care about. I always end up feeling like s–t when I look at Instagram. Which is why I’m kind of under the radar, ghosting it a bit.”
