Selena Gomez: actor, producer, philanthropist, and expert advice-giver. Dove Cameron recently reminisced about her Disney Channel days with Buzzfeed, and she shared the valuable advice she received from Selena early in her acting career.
ICYMI: Selena and Dove’s time at Disney Channel briefly overlapped. Wizards of Waverly Place aired its last season in 2012, just when Dove landed Liv and Maddie at 16. (The series then premiered in 2013, when Dove was 17.)
However, the timing was not the only thing the two stars had in common. Speaking to Buzzfeed at New York’s iHeartRadio Jingle Ball, Dove revealed that both she and Selena had gotten their start thanks to the same person: Gary Marsh, who was the head of the network when Dove joined the DC fam. “I owe him everything, what he did for me and my career,” Dove said of Marsh. (Marsh existed Disney in 2021 after spending more than three decades working for the company.)
Speaking to Buzzfeed, Dove shared that Marsh was the one to “discover” Selena and brought her on to Disney Channel — though it is worth noting that the multihyphenate had previously famously starred in Barney & Friends, where she met Demi Lovato.
Once Dove joined Disney Channel, Marsh wanted her to meet Selena, who was somewhat of her portegé, and thus decided to set up an encounter between the two. “He loved Selena, and he was like, ‘I really want you to do me a favor, would you go and meet with Selena? She can talk to you about what this is about to be because you’re life’s going to change,” Dove recounted.
Dove finally visited Selena at her house. “She was really kind,” the actor shared. “I had never even done anything, I wasn’t doing interviews or anything. We sat at her kitchen table for hours, I think she offered to make me toast.” But, of course, Selena had more than just toast to offer. “She gave me some advice on what not to do and definitely things to do,” Dove said.
After their meeting, the two kept in contact. Dove shared that, for months, she would even text Selena “in a panic” when she didn’t know what to do. Per Dove, Selena’s words of wisdom in response were: “Be yourself, everybody wants you to be yourself. You’re gonna kill it.” Selena’s piece of advice stuck with Dove, who admitted the message was “really important” to her, and the rest, as they say, is history.
In the past, Selena Gomez has been vocal about the pressures she felt as a Disney Channel star and how stepping into the limelight at a young age irrevocably changed her life. She even touches upon this topic in her Apple TV+ documentary My Mind & Me. “When I was younger, I was exposed to all of this [fame]. It was just all these pictures and all the things and all I would do is look at the flaws,” Selena said in a podcast back in 2019. “It is hard. And I think that you kind of create this other persona of yourself.”
Knowing that and knowing that she helped Dove stay away from that persona is all the more meaningful, and we love to see it.
