Selena Gomez is not particularly famous for starting fights — but she’s happy to finish them.
Flanked by cameras and assistants sporting plastic face shields, Gomez has spent the past few weeks walking the streets of Manhattan in a shaggy, rust-colored coat, filming scenes for the Hulu original series “Only Murders in the Building,” a show inspired by true crime podcasts and helmed by comedy greats Steve Martin and Martin Short.
The guys make rather distracting costars for Gomez — “I can barely get through a tape because they’re making me laugh the entire time,” she says — but more distracting are the paparazzi, who, after having a slow year during the COVID-19 pandemic, now trail the 28-year-old superstar doggedly across the city. It was finally on one afternoon in late February when Gomez broke character to throw a middle finger at a cheeky paparazzo on the street. “Somebody was being disrespectful,” she tells The Times. “And I don’t do well with that.”