Selena Gomez still won’t go into detail about her most recent stint in rehab, but alluded to it in order to promote her new Netflix project, “13 Reasons Why.”
“I was actually going through a really difficult time when they started production,” Gomez, 24, told press (via The Hollywood Reporter) on Wednesday. “I went away for 90 days, and I actually met tons of kids in this place that we’re talking about a lot of the issues that these characters are experiencing.”
The show is based on the Jay Asher book of the same name in which a high school student named Clay discovers a series of audio tapes from his crush revealing the reasons why she took her own life.
Gomez, who admitted to suffering from anxiety and depression stemming from her lupus diagnosis, said coming of age in the spotlight wasn’t easy.
“Growing up in the biggest high school in the world, which was Disney Channel … adults that had the audacity to tell me how to live my life. It was very confusing for me, it was so confusing,” Gomez said. “I had no idea who I was going to be. It hits a very important part in me, and I think this is what [kids today] need to see.”
“Whether I like it or not, people have seen my mistakes, and I have to use that as a good thing,” she continued. “It definitely hits home. That’s why I wanted to make sure I was still a part of this project in any way.”
The former “Wizards of Waverly Place” star also confessed to detesting social media, a sentiment she previously shared in her American Music Awards acceptance speech in November.
“It’s hard right now. I can’t stand social media, I can’t stand what they’re looking at,” Gomez, who recently posed in a thong on Instagram, fumed. “I can’t stand what they think is reality.”