Francia Raísa has gone on the record to adamantly deny that she never wanted to donate her kidney to Selena Gomez back in 2017.
“It came out of the genuine kindness of my heart,” she told the Good Guys podcast in an episode which aired this week, adding, “I have been super blessed ever since.”
Since the kidney transplant, there have been ongoing rumours surrounding the pair’s friendship. Some people implied Raísa had been pressured by the pop star to undergo the transplant surgery amid Gomez’s battle with lupus.
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“I just felt it in my heart. I knew it was a match, I knew it was going to happen. No one forced me to do anything,” Raísa, 35, said on the podcast.
“She and I went public with our situation years ago and, honestly, we had to,” she recalled of the aftermath of the surgery, which they revealed to the public a few months afterward.
“As for what’s going on lately, does anyone prep you for this kind of stuff? Never. We never get prepped for this kind of stuff. It always catches me by surprise. I don’t know if it’s good or not.”
Raísa recently revealed there was “no beef” between the two, who have been friends since 2007 – despite months of headlines that their friendship was over.
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In late 2022, Gomez revealed in an interview that her only friend in the industry was Taylor Swift. Raísa reacted by replying “interesting” to an Instagram post of the quote, then unfollowing Gomez on social media.
On the podcast, Raísa revealed she tries to steer clear of all the online chatter about her and Gomez.
“I can’t read the comments because I don’t do well with it,” she said. “They hit you right there. Someone said, ‘Oh, you’re just looking for attention because your career’s a flop.’ I’m like, ‘Is it a flop?'”
Gomez also quashed rumours of bad blood between the two, posting a photo to Instagram and wishing her friend a happy birthday in late July.
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In 2018, Raísa opened up to W magazine about her decision to donate her kidney.
“[Selena] 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.’ And it just came out of me, and I said, ‘I’ll get tested.'”
Gomez said in an episode of Apple TV+’s Dear…: “I will never, ever, ever be more in debt to a person than Francia. The idea of someone not even second-guessing to be a donor was unbelievably overwhelming.”
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