After receiving heavy backlash for insensitive remarks made about singer Selena Gomez’s 2017 kidney transplant surgery on the “Save By The Bell” reboot, NBC and their streaming service, Peacock, have apologized to the singer.
“We apologize. It was never our intention to make light of Selena’s health. We have been in touch with her team and will be making a donation to her charity, The Selena Gomez Fund for Lupus Research at USC,” representatives for Peacock, NBCUniversal and the show’s executive producers said in a statement to Variety on Saturday.
In the sixth episode of the reboot’s first season, multiple references to Gomez’s surgery for lupus-related organ damage led to outrage online from the singer’s fan.
In one scene, two actors argued over who Gomez’s kidney donor was after the fictional school took away their cellphones.
“I know for a fact that Selena Gomez’s kidney donor was Justin Bieber’s mom. God, I wish that I had my phone so that I could prove it,” one high schooler says. The other responds: “Prove what? That you’re an idiot? It was Demi Lovato’s kidney.”
In another scene, while two students were speaking, the wall in the background rad, “Does Selena Gomez even have a kidney?”
Fans were deeply angered and hurt by the insensitivity displayed by the show.
Gomez became very ill as she began experiencing complications from lupus, which is an autoimmune disease where the body’s immune system attacks healthy tissue. Over 1.5 million people are affected by the disease in America.
A few years after she was diagnosed, the singer informed her followers that she had undergone a kidney transplant with an organ given by her friend, actress Francia Raisa.
While Gomez has yet to address the controversial episode publicly, Raisia has expressed her disappointment in a post on Instagram.
“Some of the cast and producers have reached out to me personally to apologize for this, and I truly appreciate that,” Raisa wrote on Instagram stories Saturday. “But I do want to acknowledge that this public apology from the network should acknowledge the donors that could have been offended by this.”
“It’s not about me,” she continued, “it’s about acknowledging the great role that donors play.”
