Newsfeed
As the press tour for Emilia Pérez draws to a close, Selena Gomez has retaliated against netizens who criticised her body at the film’s latest premiere. On October 29, the multi-hyphenate creative arrived at the American French Film Festival in Los Angeles to debut the Spanish-language crime musical with her co-stars Zoë Saldaña and Karla Sofía Gascón.
Rather than the film’s ambitious and operatic score or the stirring way in which French director Jacques Audiard explores sacrifice for the pursuit of happiness be the centre of attention, online users instead used the appearance to share shocking remarks about Gomez’s appearance. While Gomez stunned in a body-conscious black midi dress, showcased her elegant lob and appeared perfectly poised, commenters immediately found fault with the way the Rare Beauty founder chose to pose on the red carpet.
Now, on November 4, the 32-year-old took a stand against her naysayers. “This makes me sick,” she wrote of the disparagement in a TikTok comment. “I have SEBO [sic] in my small intestine. It flares up,” she continued to explain. “I don’t care that I don’t look like a stick figure. I don’t have that body. End of story. No I am NOT a victim. I’m just human.”
SIBO, or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, is a condition where an excess of bacteria is found and can be caused by a slowed digestive tract, an increase of scar tissue growth and result in abdominal pain and bloating. The Only Murders In The Building star has previously opened up about her health battles, including in her 2022 documentary My Mind And Me where she discussed her struggles with the auto-immune disease lupus and bipolar disorder.
However, when it came to her role as cartel wife Jessi Del Monte in Emilia Pérez, a performance that earned Gomez the ‘Best Actress’ award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, the star shared how “lucky” she felt to be a part of the production.
“I’ve been dreaming of doing a role like this for many reasons,” she shared with Extra. “I felt challenged and I felt excited and eager to see all the places that Jacques was going to take me,” she shared. “It was a million times better than I even imagined because I got to meet these women and it just felt like a whole experience that I had never felt before and I hope this is just the beginning.”
Emilia Pérez follows Gascón as the titular character, a former drug cartel boss who enlists the help of an unappreciated lawyer stuck in a dead-end job to help fake their death so that they can finally transition to live authentically as her true self. The film is set to be released in Australian theatres in 2025. In the meantime, watch the trailer below.
