The Golden Globes on Sunday kicked off awards season, beginning the annual cycle of conversations about your favorite celebrities including Selena Gomez, Margot Robbie, Ayo Edebiri, and Julianne Moore in couture, as well as all the predictions on who will win at the Oscars.
But this year the only thing anyone wanted to talk about the day after the ceremony was a video involving Gomez. It went viral almost as soon as a sneaky Globes attendee filmed it and put it on social media. In it Gomez, clad in a red dress and an elaborate updo, crouches next to her longtime friend, Taylor Swift, during a commercial break.
With her outsized facial expressions, an emphasis on a word that appeared to be “no,” a snappy nod of her head, and a glint in her eye, it sure seemed Gomez was spilling some tea. And if Swift’s reaction—along with that of friend and Globes date Keleigh Teller were anything to go on, the tidbit appeared to be juicy. The moment kicked off an entire news cycle on the internet, with journalists and commentators speculating what Gomez could have possibly told her friends.
The theory that was given most credence (this is according to amateur lip readers on X (formerly Twitter), Reddit and TikTok so do with that what you will) was that Gomez was telling her friends that she had asked for a photo with Timothee Chalamet, and was told “no” by his girlfriend Kylie Jenner. The theory spread so wide, in fact, that both Chalamet and eventually Gomez had to come out publicly and say that it wasn’t true.
Gomez chose to address the rumor, as she is known to do, in a comment she wrote on a post by E! News, which had speculated about the drama.
“Noooooo I told Taylor about two of my friends who hooked up,” she wrote. “Not that that’s anyone’s business.”
The incident is just par for the course for Gomez, Hollywood’s busiest—if most well-meaning—gossip girl. During the past year she’s caused more than one kerfuffle over alleged shady social media posts that led to real or imagined “feuds,” gotten herself into trouble over putting her foot in her mouth, and “quit Instagram” multiple times (only to return literally weeks or even days later).
She flees Instagram so regularly, in fact, that it has become a meme. When she announced following the Timothee and Kylie drama that she was again taking a break, people began to bet on social media how long this one would last. It turned out to be, iconically, less than 24 hours.
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Gomez has had this reputation before the Golden Globes situation, but the video, the now historic photos of the interaction, and her behavior afterward have truly cemented her status as one of us.
“Selena Gomez may be the only truly real celebrity (reads everything about herself online, takes it too personally, unable to quit social media),” wrote one person on X.
Sure, people get annoyed at Gomez’s antics sometimes, and it isn't cool that when she throws shade, her stans get riled up and start bullying or sending death threats. But when it’s something as ultimately harmless as the Golden Globes drama, I’m 100% all in.
It’s fun to see stars gossip and maybe even act a little embarrassing on social media. After all, if we didn’t have Gomez to thank for giving us some hot goss to speculate about, we would have had to spend the day after the Globes dissecting the cringe jokes by Jo Koy or, I don’t know, actually working or something. And what fun would that have been?
Stephanie McNeal is a senior editor at Glamour and the author of Swipe Up for More! Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers.
