Selena Gomez’s Failed Startup

Summary

Infamous Podcast: "Selena Gomez's Mommy Issues"

Date: February 12, 2026
Host: Natalie Robehmed with Vanessa Grigoriadis
Guest: Angelina Chapin (Features writer for The Cut)
Main Theme:
An in-depth look at the complicated mother-daughter relationship between Selena Gomez and her mother, Mandy Teefee, and the downfall of their mental health startup, Wondermind. The episode explores fame, family, mental health, and the dangers of celebrity-driven entrepreneurship.

---

Episode Overview

This episode dives into the personal and professional entanglements between Selena Gomez—a world-famous pop star and entrepreneur—and her mother, Mandy Teefee. The hosts and their guest, journalist Angelina Chapin, unpack the seeds of Wondermind, the mental health startup Selena and Mandy co-founded, its subsequent collapse, and what this reveals about the pitfalls of mixing family, fame, and business. Central questions revolve around responsibility, boundaries in familial relationships, and the sometimes illusory promise of celebrity-driven ventures.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Mother-Daughter Dynamic

• Early Life and Fame

  • Mandy was a 16-year-old single mom trying to make ends meet in Texas, aspiring to be an actress—a dream she passed on to Selena, taking her to auditions and local theater ([02:09]).
  • Selena got her first acting role at age 7 on Barney, escaping a tough childhood into an alternate world on set:

    “I got to go escape my life and just be in Barneyland and just play and sing. I just fell in love with these escape things.” — Selena Gomez ([03:24])

  • Mandy became Selena's "momager," managing her early Disney career and shaping her as a child star with a comparatively wholesome image compared to contemporaries like Britney Spears ([04:28]-[05:12]).

• Strain and Independence

  • As Selena grew older and more successful, the relationship showed cracks:
    • Mandy was eventually fired as Selena’s manager in 2014, reportedly learning from TMZ—a claim Mandy later disputed in conversation with Angelina Chapin ([07:42]-[08:13]).

      "She wouldn't let her go to the after parties...she has some appreciation for [her mom as a protective force]." — Angelina Chapin ([07:08])

• Mental Health Challenges

  • Both Mandy and Selena have struggled with mental health—Mandy with mood swings, self-medication, and, at times, possible manic episodes; Selena with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and lupus ([09:02]-[13:10]).
  • Touching anecdote of Selena comforting Mandy during one of her breakdowns as a child:

    "She just started playing with my hair...I don't know what I'm supposed to do...You'll figure it out, mommy, you're beautiful." — Mandy Teefee and Selena Gomez ([09:02])

The Rise and Fall of Wondermind

• Wondermind’s Origin

  • Stemming from media appearances and the "girlboss" wave, Wondermind was positioned as a game-changing, stigma-breaking mental health platform co-founded by Selena, Mandy, and Daniella Pierson ([16:50]-[18:35]).
  • The vision: the "WebMD and Psychology Today of mental health," but reality was more akin to Buzzfeed-style listicle content lacking real innovation ([18:35]).

    "It doesn't really make sense other than the fact Selena's attached...It's really basic content." — Angelina Chapin ([18:35])

• Selena’s Distance & Organizational Tension

  • Employees felt Wondermind was the "ugly stepchild" compared to Selena’s Rare Beauty; Selena’s involvement was minimal and her promotional support tepid ([19:55]).

    "We need to install mommy somewhere so she has something to do." — Angelina Chapin ([19:55])

  • Mandy was described as an “erratic” CEO, lacking business acumen and attempting to distance the venture from her daughter's fame, even at the company’s expense ([21:41]).

    "She really wanted to prove herself...being the CEO wasn't the way to do it. That wasn't her skillset." — Angelina Chapin ([21:41])

  • Startling anecdote about a male investor diminishing Mandy’s role:

    “Oh yeah, you—you gave birth. That’s why you’re here.” — ([21:41])

• Allegations of Erratic Behavior

  • Mandy’s management involved disappearances, unpredictable angry bursts, and reports of her sleeping in the office for days, surrounded by mess and compulsive behaviors ([24:23]).

    • Employees alleged IV drips (vitamin blends, Benadryl), possible drug use, and a general sense of instability ([24:54]-[27:46]).
    • When directly asked about drug use, Mandy categorically denied snorting Ritalin:

      “When I did get to the alleged drug abuse...that was the only place where she said, categorically, no, that didn’t happen.” — Angelina Chapin ([27:57])

  • Founders and employees described feelings akin to a "hostage situation," driven by financial disarray, missed paychecks, and emotional volatility ([32:32]-[34:05]).

  • Employees expressed anger toward both Mandy (for mismanagement) and Selena (for failing to intervene, given her wealth and proximity):

    “One of them says, I would never just leave if I saw my mother that way. I would do something.” — Angelina Chapin ([34:32])

The Question of Responsibility

• Selena’s Role

  • Discussion about whether it’s fair to blame Selena for not stepping in to rescue either the company or her mother, given the psychological complexity of their relationship ([37:55]-[39:53]):

    “…It’s kind of like putting all the responsibility on Selena doesn’t seem particularly fair to me. And also I also wonder how much she actually knew about what was going on at the company.” — Natalie Robehmed ([37:55]) “...Where does personal responsibility lie? What are you supposed to do for someone you love who is struggling?” — Angelina Chapin ([39:38])

• Reflections on Family, Fame, and Boundaries

  • Notable quote from Mandy about her own fate if not for Selena, illustrating their enmeshed dynamic:

    “Everything in her life would have been different without Selena, and she would have gone down a rougher path. She might not have even been here today.” — Vanessa Grigoriadis paraphrasing Mandy ([39:53])

  • Mandy’s internal questioning post-miscarriage about whether she ruined Selena’s life or what fame had cost them ([41:04]).

    “I'm seeing what fame has done to my daughter and all the situations she’s in...this fame is awful.” — Mandy Teefee via Angelina Chapin ([41:05])

  • Final warning about the “platform-ization” of mental health business by celebrities—platform, not preparation, is the key currency in today’s media:

    “You can find yourself in a position where you have all this influence, but you don’t have the skills to actually get a job done.” — Angelina Chapin ([43:01])

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Wondermind’s Real Value

  “If you strip Selena away from it, it’s just...nothing.” — Angelina Chapin ([23:49])

• On Working for Wondermind

  “You're getting hired to work at Selena Gomez's mental health startup, you're pretty psyched about it.” — Vanessa Grigoriadis ([33:10])

• On the cost of family business

  “Maybe you don’t install them as a CEO, but are you really expected to care for them the rest of your life when you have a really complicated dynamic? ...Where’s that line?” —Angelina Chapin ([39:38])

• On the dynamic of saving each other

  “Who is saving whom here?” — Vanessa Grigoriadis ([39:53])

---

Important Timestamps

• 00:31-05:36: Selena’s childhood, early fame, and the mother-daughter bond
• 07:42-09:40: The break—firing Mandy, instability, and emotional codependence
• 13:10-16:45: Both mother and daughter’s mental health struggles; lupus, hospitalizations, and media speculation
• 16:50-24:23: Founding of Wondermind, corporate dynamics, and Selena’s lack of involvement
• 24:23-27:46: Mandy’s erratic leadership, allegations of substance abuse, and toxic work culture
• 32:32-36:30: Employee outrage, mismanagement accusations, and the final collapse of the startup
• 37:55-43:01: Broader reflections on familial obligation, mental illness, and power
• 43:01-end: Platforms, celebrity start-ups, and dangers of the current media landscape

---

Additional Segment: Extended Discussion of "Daughtering" ([44:09-51:06])

A bonus clip from host Vanessa’s other podcast, "So Your Parents Are Old," with professor Alison Alford, reframes caregiving and boundaries from the adult daughter perspective. Key points relevant to Selena’s relationship with her mother:

• There are no "bad daughters"; even distance or no-contact may be acts of self-protection, not spite ([45:20]).
• Encourages perspective: “you have to put your oxygen mask on first” ([46:47]).
• The difficulty and pride of care work resembles home ownership: it’s satisfying overall even though most days are “lawn care day, trash care day” ([47:49]-[50:28]).

---

Tone & Style

The conversation is candid, often wry or sharp, and at times quite poignant. It refuses neat answers, leaning into the messiness and contradictions of mental illness, family obligation, and modern celebrity culture. The hosts and guest mix personal anecdote, journalistic reporting, and social commentary throughout.

---

Summary Takeaway

This episode exposes the complex web of love, obligation, power, and pain woven between a celebrity and her mother, amplified through the lens of mental health activism and ultimately explosive startup failure. It’s a cautionary tale about boundaries (both personal and professional), the limits of good intentions without skills or resources, and the unpredictable fallout when family trauma, mental illness, and high-profile business mix in the public eye.

Transcript

[Angelina Chapin]

This episode is brought to you by Peloton Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross Training Tread plus, powered by Peloton iq. With real time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence, helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push and go. Explore the new peloton cross training Tread [e-mail] campsite media.

[Natalie Ropamed]

Anyone who has a mother probably knows that that relationship with your mother can be complicated. But what happens when both mother and daughter struggle with mental health and one of them is one of the most famous people in the world and the other isn't? Add in trying to make a business out of mental health and you've got the story of wondermind, Selena Gomez's ill fated and little known mental health startup. Today we're talking about Disney star turned beauty mogul Selena Gomez and her mom, Mandy Teefee. In 2021, Selena and Mandy Co founded Wondermind, a startup that aimed to destigmatize mental health and democratize its care. But what actually happened at wondermind was very different. Selena's mom, Mandy Teefey, was wondermind's ce, and an erratic one at that. In many ways, wondermind's unraveling echoes some of the epic startup downfalls of the last decade plus such as Theranos or WeWork. But it's also much more personal than those. It's about child stardom and mental health and what we really owe those we love. Commandee T50 Mandy was a teen mom. She gave birth to Selena when she was just 16 years old. The pair lived in a rough neighborhood in a small town in Texas where Mandy struggled to make ends meet as a single mom. Here's Selena talking about Mandy.

[Selena Gomez]

She was so young, still in school, and eventually tried every job you could possibly imagine. She said, this is what we're going through, but I'm not going to stop. I'm not gonna give up. I'm gonna make life better than this.

[Natalie Ropamed]

But making life better would come at a cost. From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is infamous. I'm Natalie Ropamed. With us today is Angelina Chapin, a features writer for the Cut who wrote a fantastic story for the Cut titled what Happened at wondermind. Angelina, welcome to the show.

[Angelina Chapin]

Hi Natalie, thanks so much for having me.

[Natalie Ropamed]

I think let's start by just talking a little bit about who Selena Gomez is. Where did she come from?

[Angelina Chapin]

Her mom was actually trying to be an actress as well. And so she would bring Selena to local theater productions. And Selena said, mom, I want to be an actress, but I want to be a film actress. Mandy supported this dream. She really gets her big break when she's seven and she beats out more than a thousand other kids to land a role on Barney.

[Selena Gomez]

I was 7 years old when I got my first job. I was proud because I got to go escape my life and be in Barneyland and just play and sing. I don't know, I just fell in love with these escape things.

[Angelina Chapin]

And little known fact, her co star was Demi Lovato. So they obviously both went on to become very famous. And Mandy sort of started to become her stage mom at that point, like shuffling her to and from the set. And then there was a period of time where she was trying to get another gig when Barney ended and she was auditioning, doing lots of pilots for the Disney Channel. But her next big break really comes about five years later when she lands the lead role in Wizards of Waverly, which was this Disney Channel series where she played a teenage wizard from a family of wizards. That's what really put her on the map more than anything. And she moved to LA and became super famous basically when she started dating Justin Bieber.

[Vanessa]

So she was a Disney kid but not sexed up like Britney Spears?

[Angelina Chapin]

No, very wholesome. She was more playing honestly age appropriate roles. Like she was a little kid in Barney. She was a teenager, roughly when she was a teenager on Wizards of Waverly. So she wasn't really positioned as this song and dance young little virgin tart. She was just kind of allowed to be goofy and fun and they weren't putting like fake eyelashes on her. When she was five.

[Natalie Ropamed]

I watched her documentary My Mind in Me last night. And even in that, from footage when she's 24, she looks at least five years younger. I mean, she just looks very young to me.

[Angelina Chapin]

She's very cherubic. She's got, you know, she's got the apple cheeks and yeah, she does look young. It would be weird to sex her up in the way they did Britney. I don't know if they could pull that off.

[Vanessa]

She really has that heart shaped face. I mean, her face is. When you say heart shaped face, there's nobody with a more heart shaped face.

[Angelina Chapin]

It's her. It's her. She's in the dictionary for a heart shaped face. 100%.

[Vanessa]

I interviewed Justin Bieber for the COVID of Rolling Stone. It was his first cover.

[Angelina Chapin]

And what year was that? Vanessa?

[Vanessa]

2013. So January 2013. And they had started dating, and he was totally in love with her. I mean, that was the relationship. Was it also her real soul match, heart love, or was it more on his side?

[Angelina Chapin]

Sounds like it was. I mean, obviously, even if you just look at her music, after that relationship, there's so many love songs, breakup songs that they've written about each other. You to Love Me. It was very tumultuous in that teenage way. They were on again, they were off again. Very teenager in the sense that her mom didn't approve and was vocal in the tabloids about that. Bieber's a bad influence on my daughter, especially as she's just starting to go to premieres and be on the red carpet, and he is getting arrested for a dui. He's becoming this bad boy, and she just really doesn't have that reputation. So I think there was a sense from Mandy's perspective of she's head over heels in love with this bad influence, and he's kind of ruining my daughter's life, but she's so in love with him that nothing can be done.

[Vanessa]

But at this point, her mom and she are close, and her mom's her momager and everything's all good or not so much.

[Angelina Chapin]

Yes, they're very close. At this point. This point, Mandy becomes her momager. She's got a stepdad. At this point, the stepdad moves with Mandy. They're sort of her team. And, you know, if you read media reports at that time, Selena will say she was thankful for her mom. Like, she kept her out of trouble. She wouldn't let her go to the after parties where whatever nefarious behavior was happening. She sort of talks about her as this protective force who, at least from the outside, it sounds like she has some appreciation for.

[Natalie Ropamed]

But I think oftentimes when a relationship is so close between mother and daughter, when the daughter tries to kind of strike out on her own and gain independence, that can cause some tension. And at least from the outside, that seems to me what happened here. Because in 2014, Selena went ahead and she fired her mother and stepfather. She did. In the documentary, Mandy said that she learned news that she was fired from tmz. But she told you that was. She told you something else?

[Angelina Chapin]

She told me something different. She said, oh, it was actually a series of conversations, and I knew about it. And actually, you know, I was more worried about her because she wouldn't have this protective field around her anymore. And she didn't really realize how much I did for her. But I think we can take that with a grain of salt. I mean, as Selena became older and more powerful and honestly probably had other people who were much, much better suited to manage her. Much more savvy, much more connected, she's going, why is my mom here? Like, I don't want to be hanging out with my mom. I'm in my early 20s. Like this is not fun. And who knows the psychodrama that was happening. But I think the main takeaway I had from the reporting was just Mandy was very controlling and Selena just didn't. She was too famous to need to put up with that.

[Natalie Ropamed]

Frankly, it's really worth emphasizing that Mandy herself was somewhat unstable. She experienced mood swings and had what were later diagnosed as manic episodes. She began drinking self medicating as she sees it now. When Gomez was a young child and to me you had this really telling anecdote that I just wanted to read. Mandy told me a story of breaking down in tears. One day as she was putting on her makeup, Gomez began comforting her. She said she just started playing with my hair. And TFI recalled looking in the mirror and telling her daughter, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. And Gomez replied, you'll figure it out. Mommy, you're beautiful.

[Angelina Chapin]

They look like sisters on the red carpet. They look like they're sort of having fun. Relatively the same age. You know, this is a cliche you hear about teen parents, but they truly were are growing up together. And you have to think of the tension that's arising when you have someone like Mandy who wanted to be an actor, if not famous, and then her daughter becomes that. The only clout she has is Selena, which is not a great dynamic right when you're a parent. And she self identified to me, kind of tongue in cheek as a nepo parent. Like that's her currency. That's sort of. This is a woman who had so many ambitions for herself, who is from this tough knuckle background and she's always being reduced to Selena's mom. And I think that weighs on her. We'll get into it more. But with the business they start together, you can see that she's trying to say, no, no, this is I'm Mandy, this is my thing.

[Advertisement Voice 1]

These days life is busy, schedules are packed and taking care of yourself can feel like a full time job. But who has the time? Hers is here to support you on your weight loss journey. If prescribed, you get medication as part of a doctor developed weight loss program complete with ongoing care check ins, dosage and medication adjustments and access to 24. 7 online support at no additional cost, no hidden fees and no membership fees. Whether you want to lose weight, grow thicker, fuller hair or find relief for anxiety, hers has you covered. Visit forhers.cominfamous to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you that's f o r h E-R-S.cominfamous forhers.com infamous weight loss by hers is not available everywhere. Compounded drug products are not approved or evaluated for safety, effectiveness or quality by the fda. Prescription required. See full website for details, important safety information and restrictions. Actual price depends on product and plan purchase.

[Natalie Ropamed]

I love to cook and HelloFresh makes it easy to do more of it with recipes that feel good and taste delicious night after night. I love having friends over for dinner during the week and HelloFresh gives me a great opportunity to expand my repertoire. With HelloFresh you can choose from more than 35 high protein recipes each week with wholesome ingredients like sustainably sourced seafood and 100 antibiotic and hormone free chicken. Plus I can impress my guests with new grass fed steak ribeyes and make meals with seasonal produce like pears, apples and asparagus. Because when dinner tastes this good, nothing hits like home cooking. I use HelloFresh for quick weeknight meals and you can too. Go to hellofresh.com scandal10fm to get 10 free meals plus a free Zwilling knife, a $144.99 value on your third box offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. Selena really became one of the most famous people in the world and a large part of that through her following on Instagram, she became the most followed person in 2016, the first person to reach 100 million followers. But also at the same time she was experiencing mental health issues herself.

[Selena Gomez]

Yes, but eventually after doing this for so long, I started to feel vain. It made me feel lonely somehow. And then when I started touring it just got worse.

[Angelina Chapin]

As you said, I think Natalie, her mom Mandy, was diagnosed with bipolar at one point and Selena also is diagnosed with bipolar and she's also dealing with lupus, which is, you know, a physical health issue. And so behind the scenes she's in and out of rehab facilities. They called me and wanted to know what my daughter was doing in the hospital with a nervous breakdown. She didn't want anything to do with me and I was scared she was going to die.

[Selena Gomez]

My thoughts take over my mind. Often it hurts when I think about my past. I want to know how to breathe again Do I love my own self? How do I learn how to breathe my own breath?

[Angelina Chapin]

It's not always clear. Is this to do with substance abuse and mental health issues? Is this because of lupus related treatment? It sort of becomes a blur. And the tabloids are obviously playing it up in the. Oh, she's, you know, drugged out and she's having to detox and she's saying, no, I had chemotherapy for lupus, so it's kind of a tumultuous time for her. But she's making music now. You know, she's transitioned from acting. Yeah. There's just so much going on. And then in the meantime, Mandy started a production company and buys the rights to what later becomes 13 reasons why on Netflix. And she wants Selena to star in it. And so you can see how she's still trying to keep a foothold with her daughter's fame, even as her daughter's on this rocket ship and she's sort of being left behind.

[Natalie Ropamed]

Yeah. And it's around this time, 2016, I mean, Selena has her first major hit, Hands to Myself, which was kind of like a grown up song. She describes while on tour that she had a psychotic break when she was around 24. And mother and daughter are not talking at this time.

[Angelina Chapin]

Right.

[Natalie Ropamed]

And that is, as you say, when Selena gets a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

[Selena Gomez]

I have the greatest friends and family, especially my mom and my stepdad, Brian.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

Because.

[Angelina Chapin]

I shouldn't have spoken to them the way that I did, and I shouldn't have treated them the way that I did. Sometimes then they know it wasn't me.

[Natalie Ropamed]

It's interesting to me that both her and her mom got the same diagnosis.

[Angelina Chapin]

Well, Mandy, actually she was re diagnosed as not having bipolar, as just having adhd. But I think you can see from the piece that her behavior seems beyond the scope of someone who's just suffering from adhd.

[Natalie Ropamed]

Right. And you know, at the same time, as you said, the tabloids are speculating about what really is going on with Selena. Is it substances? Is it mental health? And she really does have serious health issues. She gets a kidney transplant in September 2017. But Selena and her mom at some point do reconcile.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

Right.

[Natalie Ropamed]

Or at least start talking again.

[Angelina Chapin]

In our conversation, Mandy says Selena thought I was too controlling and she needed a break from me and I gave her space. And then she came around. I think she might have alluded to them doing some therapy, but says that it was really Selena's choice.

[Natalie Ropamed]

And then by 2021, they're going into business again.

[Angelina Chapin]

Yeah. So the. You know the origin story. And again, grain of salt with how much you can trust the way public facing people or celebrities talk about these origin stories behind their businesses. I always think, you know, you come up with something, it sounds good, you keep saying it in interviews. But the tale goes that yeah, it's Covid, sort of 2020 period. Selena started Rare Beauty. At this point they are talking more about mental health with one another as mother and daughter privately. And then a woman named Daniella Pearson who runs this media startup called the Newsette which is actually quite success, sort of a girl bossy newsletter before the substack era. So Daniella asks Mandy to do an interview about mental health and they have a conversation and they keep in touch. And Daniella ends up then doing a mother daughter interview with both Selena and Mandy. And then the story goes that Selena's always wanted to do something that's like just some sort of empire that would be a one stop shop to deal with any mental health issue. I think a better description comes from Daniella where she's sort of like we want to make Psychology Today and WebMD Sexy. If you are just a new user to Wondermind or you look at what it, what it was like at the time, it looks like Buzzfeed mental health content sort of lists 10 ways to deal with anxiety. It's really nothing groundbreaking. It doesn't really make sense other than the fact that Celine Selena's attached that it would get any sort of investment. It's really basic content, but it is.

[Vanessa]

You know, I mean there's a photo that you can be had of Selena Gomez looking at a laptop alongside her mom and it's in ink. I mean people are talking about it as like a buzzy startup and that's, you know, obviously because of Selena even though she's not involved in the day to day. And I mean I thought it's fascinating that you know this story that you wrote for New York magazine, there were and 14 of them talk to you about what happened at this company. So I mean we've set up all the relationship and the history between mom and daughter, but now they're working together. But really mom is in charge, Mandy's in charge. I mean, you know Selena Gomez of course being the most followed on Instagram, right? Forever. When you look at her Instagram, it is truly only promotional, right? It's her at this event. It's a rare beauty, essentially an ad. It's something you know about a foundation, a charitable endeavor. And yet she's not really posting much about Wondermind you know, you have somebody saying, like, it was like pulling teeth to get her to post something. Like, you have to call the publicist four times. So why do you think that is?

[Angelina Chapin]

Yeah, I think Wondermind, everyone who worked there sort of felt like it was the ugly stepchild compared to rare beauty. And that just rare beauty got everything. And wondermind was a complete afterthought, if it was a thought at all. I think it's probably a few things from Selena's perspective. And this is really, from what employees have told me, they think that she just wanted to give her mom something to do. You know, she does speak about mental health. That's not a lie. But I think it was just like, okay, well, we need to install mommy somewhere so she has something to do. Potentially in the most ungenerous reading so that she stays out of my life and just is occupied. Let's get her a desk, let's get her a company. Let's get her some money from Serena Williams. And hopefully she won't call me 10.

[Vanessa]

Times a day, right? Because they're doing a project called behind the Racket, a tennis docuseries that Wondermind is producing with Venus Williams. And, and look, a charitable way of saying it is she was like, let's set my mom up, right? Like, let's give my mom something to do. That's not just being like a two person production company that, you know, once in a while tries to make a movie or a TV show. Although, I mean, 13 reasons why it was definitely a big success. Mandy obviously has gotten some things done that are impressive, whether or not they are for Selena. I mean, you have a really, I think in some ways, sad anecdote that Mandy shared about going to a meeting about wondermind and having some male investor say, like, great meeting and, you know, what do you do? And then looking at Mandy and saying, oh, yeah, you, you gave birth. That's why you were here. That's pretty messed up.

[Angelina Chapin]

It's pretty messed up. I think there was a sense that she really wanted to prove herself. And I think unfortunately, being the CEO of a company was not the way to do it. That wasn't her skill set. So while she maybe had the production chops to do a 13 reasons why, it was really a misapplication that kind of set her up for failure. She doesn't have any real business experience. She hasn't managed a team. Her production companies have been small. There's some quotes in the piece of the way that she would turn down deals if they hinged on Selena's participation, the employees would be so frustrated because from their perspective, she was not using the real capital that they had, which was her famous daughter. But from her perspective, she's like, this is supposed to be different. This is my thing. I don't want it to be known as Selena's website, But it's kind of an impossible situation if you don't have the skill set to do it better than your daughter or overcome her fame in some way through your talent at running a business.

[Natalie Ropamed]

Right. And it strikes me that you could see from the outside, at first glance how this could appear to be a good idea.

[Vanessa]

Right.

[Natalie Ropamed]

It's these two people, this mother and daughter, who have both struggled with mental health, and maybe they can come together again, and they're bonding over these struggles. But at the same time, the feeling I have looking at this company is one I have with a lot of startups, which is, should this be a business?

[Angelina Chapin]

Like, what is this? What is this offering? Like, it didn't. I mean, I think where this business idea went wrong, regardless of the Selena or Mandy of it, is just like, what's the. A mental health ecosystem fitness tool. Like, none of it makes sense. It's all sort of gibberish. It wasn't executed on, like, a lot of, you know, they, oh, we're gonna have film, tv, podcasts. None of that really came to be. So what you have is, again, just a website that looks to be full of listicles. And so what is the offering?

[Alison Alford]

We.

[Angelina Chapin]

We can get that already on Buzzfeed, on HuffPost. You know, there's a million media sites that do mental health content in a sort of very basic way that probably, like, Chachi BT could write at this point, if we're being honest about the quality. So, yeah, I think the sort of fatal flaw is that this is not getting off the ground without Selena. You strip Selena away from it, then it's just. It's nothing. And so the person that people were investing in doesn't even really want to be part of it or isn't for some reason. There's kind of nothing left.

[Natalie Ropamed]

So let's talk about Mandy's behavior at wondermind. I just want to read a little bit. You wrote. Employees at Wandermind had come to expect erratic behavior from their boss. Like disappearances that lasted days or even weeks and unpredictable angry bursts. T had gone through phases of sleeping in her office where she had two couches. She seemed to stay for days without bathing. There was no shower in the suite. And sometimes without changing her clothes that really sounds dire. What else did you find out?

[Angelina Chapin]

Well, I think the most troubling allegations in addition to just that picture of this disheveled person who's holing up in their office and there's takeout boxes and there's flies and there's all this online shopping, like kind of these compulsive avoidant behaviors. You know, imagine walking in to your office in the morning and your CEO is looking like, like they just woke up there and they haven't showered for days. I mean it's such a weird, bizarre portrait. But in addition to that, I think there were some drug abuse addiction allegations that were the most serious and troubling. I opened the piece with an anecdote of Mandy and late night in the Wondermine office in la, listening to the ring camera, thinking that someone is trying to break in, calling her employees, saying I need your help. One employee goes over, nothing's going on, but the police are there, they've said there's nothing to be concerned about. I read that police report as well. And then it just becoming this example to employees of the fact that they think she hallucinates. Basically she's getting these IV drips throughout the day, some of which seem to have Benadryl in them, which you know is not like an illegal substance. But when you're getting it injected directly into your veins, it, it does have a real drowsy sort of narcotic effect. And it's unusual. It's unusual for someone to be getting that as frequently as employees say. She was right.

[Natalie Ropamed]

I mean, getting IV drips, that's that rich people in LA tend to do. They're getting vitamin C IV drips and their whatever else hangover cures. But I've never heard of Benadryl. No.

[Angelina Chapin]

And when I looked it up it was sort of like doctors would do this in a really acute scenario where someone needs to feel the effects right away, otherwise there's no real reason to have it injected. Though I will say that, you know, she told me she, she suffers from long Covid. Her doctors wanted her to be getting IVs and so she sort of trusted whatever the nurses were giving her. But it's troubling to hear that employee say there was sort of what seemed to be an above board nurse who had come during the day, give her sort of that LA mix of vitamins, whatever, whatever the wealthy get. And then at night this depiction of a nurse coming with missing teeth at weird hours, potentially giving her Benadryl. So it's really concerning. And then Employees saying when they would try to interact with her, she just seemed really out of it.

[Natalie Ropamed]

Yeah. And you had an anecdote of one staff member recalled being in her office when she snorted what they believed was a line of Ritalin. I mean, did Mandy deny this behavior to you, or what did she say to you about it?

[Angelina Chapin]

It was interesting. I didn't expect to get an interview with Mandy. And when she agreed, I had reported so much, the piece was. Was far long, and obviously we said, great. I always want someone to participate. It's just unusual that somebody with that, you know, high of a profile would say yes. But we. We got on the phone, and she was completely pleasant. I have to say, people had really built her up as someone who can fly off the handle, who's unpredictable, who can be really mean and scathing. But of course, she's also a really savvy, charming person. You know, she has both sides. So I got the angel Mandy, who is happy to talk about everything. Didn't get defensive. Even when I'd say, okay, so employees claim they can't get in touch with you for weeks at a time, that you're completely avoidant. She'd sort of go, well, that's the life of a startup CEO. Like, I'm working hard. I'm staying in my office because I'm working hard. So she kind of had a casual answer to everything. But when I did get to the alleged drug abuse, the snorting Ritalin in particular, that was, I think, the only place where she said, categorically, no, that didn't happen. Which allowed People magazine to then run with the headline, you know, Mandy Teefee does not snort Ritalin or something sort of hilarious like that.

[Vanessa]

It's a real Streisand effect thing, right? Where the headline is. Now she's like, great, now I have a headline denying that I snort Ritalin. Nobody even knew there was this charge out here. But coming into the interview, did she know that she was gonna have to answer a bunch of hard questions?

[Advertisement Voice 2]

I think.

[Angelina Chapin]

I mean, she obviously had a PR person who was a former journalist, and I had told him the broad strokes of the piece. And also, it was helpful that Forbes had done a few pieces already on wondermind, Focus more on the demise of the company, the missed paychecks, the fact that all these employees were laid off, that there's recordings of Mandy and all hands saying she's taking out a loan against her house to keep the company afloat. So it wasn't a surprise that there was going to be another even More critical, indebted that story. So she was expecting that, which is why I was even more surprised that she really went through her whole story with me. I mean, you guys know this as journalists, you keep the tough stuff for the end. You're not opening with, do you. Do you snort Ritalin? And you know, do you have Benadryl from an iv? But we just talked about her childhood and she was really open. And again, I saw it as someone who wants to talk about themselves. Like, this is someone who's always feels like they're in the shadows to some extent to have a journalist say, hey, I want to learn about your life. Yes, I'm going to ask you 10 critical things at the end of the hour. But for the first 45 minutes, tell me about yourself and make yourself seem sympathetic because you've been through a lot. She was very, very open to that. Who knows, maybe. Maybe she threw something against the wall when we got off the zoom. Maybe she sent off a defamation lawsuit to one of the sources. They were all very freaked out. They were really scared of retaliation, which of course you see all the time. If people are talking about someone who has more power than that, that's not surprising. But they really. Yeah, they really thought she'd fly off the handle. And she was totally pleasant with me.

[Natalie Ropamed]

How did you get. Considering that they were scared of retaliation? I mean, why did they want to talk to you?

[Angelina Chapin]

Well, I mean, I think the hypocrisy of this being a mental health company, having Mandy do all this publicity around the great mental health work, the sort of working environment that she wanted for her employees, and then behind the scenes, they're not getting paid, things are a total shit show. Everyone's then laid off. Most people I spoke to weren't working there anymore, if not all of them. Right. So they weren't as scared as they would have been if they had a job to lose. And they were really pissed off. They felt it was hypocritical. But they also weren't getting paychecks anymore. They didn't have health care. And they were like, either fuck Selena. How dare she empower her mother, who did not have the skills or background to manage a company to run it into the ground. Or they were really mad at Mandy.

[Vanessa]

Well, yeah. I mean, she was sitting in an office watching Schitt's creak on the flat screen TV in the middle of the work day, surrounded by takeout packages like just McDonald's or Krispy Kreme. And then she's just buying stuff online. And it's not like I spent $500 on Amazon.

[Alison Alford]

Right.

[Vanessa]

You say it was like $40,000 from Neiman Marcus. It was just behavior of like, a hermit and somebody who's really mentally unwell, who is in charge basically of their lives by being their employer. I mean, look, in the new content creator economy, we're gonna see more and more of this, which is like, if your thing that you have to share with the world is, I'm willing to be honest about my mental health and I'm mentally unwell, which is what Mandy was saying, and then you're put in charge of, you know, 29 people's lives and their ability to pay their rent. It's going to be a really, you know, unfortunate situation where likely than not. So it does sound like as the company starts running out of money, it's just a total shit show. Like, it's just, oh, I'm gonna pay everybody's salary. Oh, I'm not. We're still raising a Series B. No, we're not. You know, and they're sort of sitting there going like, this is a rounding error for Selena Gomez. She could just pay our salaries right now. Instead, we're here, not sure if we're gonna have a job tomorrow and being treated. I mean, you even have somebody saying that they had to run a white noise machine sometimes because Randy was yelling at people. So it feels a little bit like a hostage situation. Obviously, anybody can leave a job at any point. We can all say that. But, you know, when you're getting hired to work at Selena Gomez's mental health startup, you're pretty psyched about it.

[Angelina Chapin]

Yeah. And you're like, I'm always gonna be paid because this. This person has a billion dollar windfall. So I think just the contrast of we're not getting our paychecks, Selena's a billionaire. Like, it's. It's too incongruous for people. And it just. Yeah, it just made them so upset.

[Natalie Ropamed]

Also, why wouldn't she help her mother out? I think you had some people quoted saying something to that effect, where they seem to blame Selena for not stepping in.

[Angelina Chapin]

Yeah. Especially those who worked in the LA office, because that's where. Where there were two offices sort of for the media component in New York and then the LA production side under Mandy in la. And these employees told me anecdotes of Selena stopping by the office, clearly seeing her mother in the state that they saw her in, which made them worried. And I think one of them says, I would never just leave if I saw my mother that way I would do something. So that was hard for people. Also, Mandy never seemed to admit what was going on with the company. I think she still doesn't. Certainly on our call, she wasn't copying to there being anything wrong with wondermind. And she was still talking about this app that it sounds like she's been talking about for years, still talking about the Series B funding. So I think the delusion of the ship is sinking. We're literally not getting paid. Our friends were just laid off. The person who handles finances has left. Like, there's no denying what we are experiencing. And then you have Mandy come in a meeting being like, hey, guys, so we're doing something with Jessica Chastain and we're gonna roll out this snack that's gonna be like Cheetos with Ashwagandha powder and we're gonna put lights in Central park for mental health day. And they're going with what? What money? What? We're not even working because there's not. There's nothing even to do. So people did have empathy for Mandy, but I think she squandered a lot of her goodwill, you know, whether it was conscious or subconscious delusion, by just failing to admit this project is not going well. I'm Tara Palmeri. I'm an investigative reporter and I've spent a lot of my career reporting on the worst of the worst. I'm the new host of Broken Jeffrey Epstein. But forget Epstein.

[Natalie Ropamed]

He's dead.

[Angelina Chapin]

This season isn't about him. It's about the people who are still alive, the victim seeking justice, and his co conspirators and enablers who are trying to hide. Listen to Broken Jeffrey Epstein wherever you get your podcasts.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

Eczema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with epglis, a once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four month or longer dosing phase, about four in ten people taking EB gliss achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.

[H]

Emplis Lebricizumab LBKZ a 250mg per 2ml injection. Eglantine is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis, that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EBGLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to ebglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Ebglis. Before starting Epglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

Ask your doctor about F gliss and visit epglis.lily.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979.

[Natalie Ropamed]

I just want to go back to Selena and her presence in this whole thing because it really strikes me that employee kind of saying to you that she should have stepped in. It kind of makes me think, well, without sounding too harsh, that employee probably doesn't have a mom who was their momager who put so much, you have to imagine, pressure and exerted so much control over her. Perhaps if they'd had a different relationship and if she'd been a different mom, then Selena may have stepped in. But it's kind of like putting all the responsibility on Selena. Doesn't seem particularly fair to me. And also I also wonder how much she actually knew about what was going on at the company.

[Angelina Chapin]

Yeah, she's definitely not in the books. Looking at the dollar amounts, I think that was. That was never gonna be her level of involvement. I think she probably did have a good sense that her mom was struggling mentally, and it seems like she saw that with her own eyes. But, yeah, to your point, Natalie, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't love a person who has a serious mental illness. And it's really complicated. If that's what's going on with Mandy. Again, we don't know. I'm just going off of the reporting and the behavior. It seems like, like she's working through something. She's had previous diagnoses. Something's going on. It's really tough. And, and obviously Selena is bipolar, so she's got her own mental health issues. So I think what I liked wrestling with in this piece is like, where does personal responsibility lie? What are you supposed to do for someone you love who is struggling? Maybe you don't install them as a CEO, but are you really expected to care for them the rest of your life when you have a really complicated dynamic where they may be lashing out at you, where they may be deeply unwell? Where's that line? And I think that answer is gonna be different for everybody. And it's super easy to judge.

[Vanessa]

Yeah. I mean, the quote to me in this, where Mandy says to you that everything in her life would have been different without Selena, and she would have gone down a rougher path. She might not have even been here today is so poignant because this is a mother saying this. And obviously, people feel that way about their kids from time to time. Like, I got straightened out because of my kid, but that's not really the meaning of this quote. Like, the meaning of this quote is much more about who is saving whom here. And, you know, what you said, what does she owe her mom? And you could argue she owes her a lot, you know? Cause that's the way family ties are. Or you could say she's the one who got her into this life of celebrity that, quite frankly, Selena Gomez has a lot of problems with. Like, she's been pretty clear that she's not excited about the fact that she ended up one of the biggest stars in the world. And that has been, for her, a terrible kind of prison as it is for so many celebrities. So.

[Angelina Chapin]

Yeah.

[Vanessa]

Yeah.

[Angelina Chapin]

And there's even a quote from our interview, I think, that I included around the time where this is 2011. So Selina's on her fame rocket ship with Bieber, you know, constantly in the public eye. And Mandy privately has a miscarriage, and she's in the throes of a depression as a result of that. And she really starts reflecting on, did I mess up Celaena's life? Like, she's thinking about this baby she lost. She's thinking about the daughter she has, and she's like, this is awful. Like, this fame is awful. And I'm seeing what fame has done to my daughter and all the situations she's in. And I think there is something to that point of just that reflection of, you know, this looks good from the outside, but it's kind of. It's hell. And it's ruined our relationship totally.

[Vanessa]

And I think one of the reasons Selina remains such a big star is that she is actually a very serious person. I mean, in this time of every influencer having fake eyelashes and vocal fry, you know, she uses this really down to earth way of speaking that's very, very distinct. And, you know, she didn't go to school after eighth grade. She was educated on sets. But she really has a, like, just don't come at me with your foolishness vibe to her that I think reads authentically, and people respect her for it. I mean, look, they both have a heavy burden because they both have these mental health problems. And really, in the end, this is a story that I'm sure will be forgotten when there's a biography of Selina. But, you know, it is. It's such a 2000 and 20s kind of things really could have only happened in our mad startup culture and mad celebrity focused culture.

[Angelina Chapin]

Yes. Like you said earlier, Vanessa, sort of the. If you have an idea and if you have a platform, whether you're a famous person like Selena Gomez or just a content creator who gains millions of followers, you can get empowered beyond your capabilities. And I think that's a big danger where it's sort of like, yeah, people go to business school for a reason, people go to med school for reasons. And we're sort of in this startup economy where if you capture enough followers and enough attention spans, you can find yourself in a position where you have all this influence, but you don't have the skills to actually get a job done. And so there's real lives that are impacted. It's like kind of the parable of our time right now.

[Natalie Ropamed]

Thank you so much, Angelina, for coming on. Where can people find you?

[Angelina Chapin]

You can find me on Instagram. I'm @AngieChapen, and you can check out my work on the cut dot com. I've got my landing page there with all my stories. And thank you guys so much for having me.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

Hey, infamous listeners. That's it for our conversation with Angelina Chapin. But before we go, we wanted to play a little bit of an interview from Vanessa's other podcast that we thought you might like, especially if stories like these about mother daughter dynamics are something that interests you. The podcast is called so your parents are old. And it's all about how our relationships with our parents change, especially as they get older and start to need care. Vanessa interviewed Alison Alford. She's a professor at Baylor University and the author of a new book, Good Daughtering. The work you've always done, the credit you've never gotten, and how to finally feel like enough. Alison has spent years researching the concept of daughtering, which she explains is all this invisible care work that adult daughters do. The story of Selena and her mother, Mandy Teefee, made us think about Alison's conversation, which put a lot of these complicated dynamics into perspective. And she also talks about when daughters choose not to do care work, when they choose to step back and protect themselves, which we can't know what's going on behind the scenes, but maybe that's something that's going on with Selena. So here's just a little bit from the middle of that interview.

[Alison Alford]

There are no wrong daughters. That's only a toxic mindset inside our minds hurting ourselves and that we're actually doing so much more daughtering than we know. Even the daughter who says, you know, we said that this is at the end of the spectrum. But let me talk about the daughters who are like, I've got to go no contact. Well, they make that choice generally not to punish, but to protect. Sometimes they're protecting themselves, and sometimes they're protecting that parent too, because they would really end up saying unkind, hurtful, mean things to them, or they're protecting the grandkids or their spouse or something. But that daughter who goes, no contact, she's still thinking, I've talked to so many no contact daughters and they say we're no contact. But they think, in the future I probably won't be like, we just all got to get through this and chill out. Or they think we're no contact now, but if she dies, I'm on tap. And so then you almost have to do daughtering, even when they're, even when they've passed. So I don't think there's a daughter not doing daughtering, at least mentally. And I don't think there's any way to be a bad daughter because everybody just has limited resources for what they could give. I guess the only thing that would be bad is somebody who's trying to destroy another person on purpose. But that would be sociopathy. So, I mean, we'd be in a totally different characteristic there.

[Natalie Ropamed]

Yeah.

[Vanessa]

You also talk about understanding that you can have periods of dormancy and stillness in your relationship that you can. I mean, it's hard with a mother who's calling, who wants you to interact, to think. I'm in a moment of stillness in my life and I can't do this. You know, my mom, who is quite ill, there's like this question of do I have to call every single day? And there's a couple of days in the week where I don't call and I feel terrible, right. And maybe I should just do the call, But I also need maybe a day not to do that call. It goes back to this, you know, self care idea, which is quite silly, but also is useful of you have to put your oxygen mask on first. But I, who have not done a ton of therapy, have heard this concept of like a yay and a yuck. But how can that be helpful for daughtering, particularly when you're dealing with older parents, declining parents, all of that.

[Alison Alford]

One of the things that I like to think about when I'm in a difficult season with my parents. So my parent is experiencing something difficult or we're just not connecting something. Sandpaper, right? Maybe your parent gets remarried and has a new spouse and you're like, ah, and it's just sandpaper. Or I've got a big, big project at work and I just don't have the time that I had last year. I don't have the time. So we're having some sandpaper. I try to think about, and I talk about this in the book Hedonic happiness versus Eudaimonic happiness and how I can reframe my mind towards doing things in daughtering that provide long term happiness even if they don't have short term benefits or nothing my parent and I are doing together is making me like feel fun. So imagine you're a homeowner and somebody just says here's $10,000 to redo the living, living room, you know, and you're like wee. And you just go buy pretty things and you paint and you decorate and you get a new TV and maybe you have a party even. But when you're a homeowner, you also have to take out the trash. You also have to clean it. You also have to, you know, pay those property taxes. But for me, I am a homeowner or at least on my way. The bank still has half of it. Maybe I feel really good about being a homeowner even though it's difficult, even though not every day is $10,000 redecorating day. Most days are lawn care day, trash care day. And so in those seasons that are difficult with a parent, I try to think about I'm still proud to be in this relationship. So I have to take out the trash or clean the gutters as part of my responsibility here. But I don't just have to think of that entirely negatively. I need to remember. But I get to own the house. I get to be in relationships. And part of that is I can feel like a good person. What you're saying is when you don't call. Part of feeling like a bad daughter is thinking I want to be a good person and I want to like myself. So when I do things that are hard and they don't feel like a party at that moment, I remind myself it's not only hard, it's also contributing to my eudaimonic happiness, my long term happiness and protecting my future self from feeling, you know, bad or sad about how I acted maybe at the end of this relationship with that in mind, no homeowner takes out the trash all day long. You know every single thing about your home. If you if the roof fell in and the this leaked and that leaked, you'd sell it. Right?

[Natalie Ropamed]

Right.

[Alison Alford]

So there has to be times where we find the fun or we look at the relationship and think, is the balance really off here? And is it in my power to change those dynamics either from what I do or what we do together or what we talk about? And if so, I've got to move to having more of that in our relationship.

[Vanessa]

Right? Right. Right. Yeah. And I mean, because as you say, conflict resolution is effective but time consuming and avoidance and snapping gives you emotional protection. Right. It protects you emotionally if you take that route.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

If you want to hear the rest of this interview, just look up so youo Parents Are Old in your podcast player. This episode is called what Does It Mean to Be a Good Daughter? We'll be back next week with an all new episode of Infamous. Thanks so much for listening. Support is available 247 with Verbo Care.

[Vanessa]

We're here day or night, ready whenever you need help because a great trip.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

Starts with the right support.