Selena Gomez and Francia Raisa have been friends since meeting in 2007. At the time, they had no idea they would forever be intertwined after Raisa donated her kidney to Gomez, who suffers from lupus.
“There aren’t words to describe how I can possibly thank my beautiful friend Francia Raisa. She gave me the ultimate gift and sacrifice by donating her kidney to me. I am incredibly blessed. I love you so much sis.”
Raisa, for her part, recalled volunteering to donate the organ to her friend in a 2018 interview with W Magazine. “She was asking me about my day and she grabbed a water bottle out of the fridge and tried to open it and couldn’t,” Raisa told the outlet at the time.
She continued: “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.’”
Five years after the kidney transplant, however, Gomez and Raisa’s friendship made headlines for a very different reason: Gomez appeared to shade Raisa by calling Taylor Swift her “only friend in the industry.” Raisa, for her part, commented on an Instagram post that Gomez’s choice of words was “interesting.”
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Keep scrolling to see Gomez and Raisa’s ups and downs through the years — and where they stand today: