Selena Gomez Details the Sweet Handmade Birthday Gift Taylor Swift Once Gave Her
A new podcast strips away the host desk, the scripted questions, and the studio lighting entirely. What’s left is 18 cameras rolling inside a real house while actual friends have actual conversations.
The first celebrity guest episode already produced the kind of personal disclosures that traditional interview formats almost never capture.
“Friends Keep Secrets,” hosted by Benny Blanco and Lil Dicky (David Burd) alongside Burd’s wife, Kristin Batalucco, films inside Burd and Batalucco’s home. No interview format. No segment clock.
The pilot episode, a 50-minute release that landed on Feb. 24, pulled in more than 224,000 views as of March 5.
The first full episode, which arrived March 3 with Blanco’s wife Selena Gomez as the guest, delivered raw, unguarded moments that a press tour rarely produces.
Here’s what surfaced and why the format made it possible.
Gomez Opened Up About Living With Bipolar Disorder
One of the episode’s most striking segments involved Gomez describing her bipolar disorder diagnosis as “complicated.” She said it took multiple therapists and four rehabs to reach that diagnosis.
What separated this from a standard disclosure was Blanco filling in details from his own perspective. He noticed early in their relationship that Gomez would have moments of “mania,” though he didn’t know what they were at the time.
“She’ll start to realize she’s having it after, and sometimes she doesn’t even remember when it’s happening,” Blanco said. “It’s such a delicate thing ‘cause you’re not supposed to technically talk to the person, really, about it while they’re deep in it, and even dating her, she’s, like, so hyper-aware.”
Gomez said she wasn’t ashamed of the episodes and praised Blanco for being understanding. She framed the conversation around what a supportive partnership looks like when mental health challenges are part of the picture.
“But it is helpful to have a partner that will understand where maybe the temperature is at, and meet you where you are, and then you kind of gradually understand what’s happening,” she said.
A Meaningful Taylor Swift Birthday Gift
Blanco told a story about Gomez bringing things over to the house from storage. Among the items was a piece of artwork that Blanco said he was “blown away” by. He asked who made it, expecting Gomez to name a famous painter.
The artist turned out to be Taylor Swift. The painting was a 30th birthday gift to Gomez.
Gomez described the piece: “She did it on an actual cloth, and she painted a beautiful lake. It was at night, and the moon was there and in the stars…she painted our exact star signs. So for hers [Sagittarius] and mine [Cancer], and she said, ‘Here’s to the next 30 years,’ handsewn, ‘From Taylor to Selena,’ and it was all sewn by hand, so she had it painted or she painted it.”
The sewing element was what struck Gomez most. “It’s just, instead of writing, ‘Here’s to the next 30 years,’ or printing it, she sewed every letter,” she said. “It was the sweetest gift.”
The story came up organically during what looked like a conversation about moving belongings into a shared space. That led to another reveal: Gomez confirmed that Swift’s song “Dorothea” is about her.
“From relationships to family to love to hate, all of it in between — we were figuring it out [together],” Gomez said. “We didn’t really know what was going on. We’ve never seen each other any differently. So when I listen to it, I’m so impressed by how it’s eloquently put.”
She also discussed a vault track titled “Family” that Swift wrote about her. The track has yet to be released. Gomez recalled what the song conveys: “It was over, easily, a decade ago, insinuating in the lyrics, without quoting, it is basically saying you have these amazing dreams.”
“You want to be in a movie, in every crowd I see you,” she explained. “Then her part was, you believe in my stupid dreams, like playing stadiums.”
Gomez reflected on how time has changed those lyrics. “Now, when I listen to those songs, both of those things have happened for us. And that’s really sweet because back then, she was just like, ‘I wrote this song about us and it was just our story,’ and it was the sweetest thing.”
The Foot Kiss and Pickle Obsession
The Gomez episode produced moments that felt genuinely spontaneous.
At one point, Gomez leaned over to kiss Blanco’s bare foot mid-conversation. The group ate pickles together (Burd, who hates pickles, put one in his mouth but couldn’t chew it and spit it out).
The foot moment had backstory. In the pilot episode, Blanco went viral for being barefoot, and fans called him out for how dirty the bottom of his feet were.
In the Gomez episode, he had his bare foot perched on a coffee table right next to where Gomez was sitting on the floor. She kissed his toes mid-sentence. Blanco turned to Burd and Batalucco and asked, “You like that?”
Gomez slapped Blanco’s knee and told him, “Don’t make it a moment.”
“No, I wasn’t. I liked it. It made me feel good. I love you so much,” Blanco responded.
He later explained that he tries not to engage in PDA when with Gomez because she likes to keep it professional during interviews and in public.
“She’s such her own entity,” Blanco said. “I want her to shine and be her own independent woman so I try so hard — I use every bone in my body not to be googly-eyed over her and not kiss her and jump her bones all the time.”
“So to watch her just kiss my toe really made my day,” he added.
The Smaller Revelations That Piled Up
The format kept surfacing details that don’t emerge in traditional settings.
Gomez said she would divorce Blanco if he took on an acting role with a sex scene. She quickly said she was joking and that she would let him take the role if it was something he believed in.
When the conversation turned to family size, Blanco asked Burd and Batalucco how many children they hope to have. Burd said no more than two kids, while his wife said “like three.”
Gomez said she wants four and traced the desire back to a specific scene from the movie The Family Stone.
“My dream for sure was that scene where they’re all at the dinner table and they’re just with their partners or their significant others or kids or single and it’s just this beautiful cast of characters,” Gomez said. She added that she would be happy with any number.
Gomez also revealed that she changed her iPhone’s AirDrop name to “Shine Bright” after receiving random photos via AirDrop on airplanes. The name comes from the Rihanna song “Diamonds,” where the lyric is “shine bright like a diamond.”
Blanco co-wrote and produced “Diamonds,” and Gomez chose the AirDrop name before she knew Blanco was the love of her life.
Gomez also revealed that a celebrity slid into her DMs in 2022 with a flirty message. The name was bleeped out.
The message consisted of a heart eyes emoji and a fingers crossed emoji. Gomez confirmed it was a random message, not a response to her Instagram Story.
“He took his shot… It was a good shot,” Blanco joked.
“I think it’s very kind. If anything, that was very nice,” Gomez said. “It did not feel inappropriate. By the way, that was the first time I’ve ever seen it!”
Her favorite snack, bread and butter pickles eaten almost every night, came up naturally during the group’s pickle-tasting segment — which ended with Burd nearly gagging.
The full first episode is available to watch here.
Production of this article included the use of AI. It was reviewed and edited by a team of content specialists.
