Hailey Bieber is addressing long-running rumors that she stole Justin Bieber from Selena Gomez.
The model, who married the pop star in 2018, went there Wednesday on the Call Her Daddy podcast, answering questions about the timeline of their relationship and addressing the “bullying” she has faced from Jelena fans. She revealed that she has spoken with Gomez and says, “There’s no drama” between them.
“I’ve literally never talked about this ever,” Hailey said while being grilled about her relationship timeline with Justin and whether it overlapped with him dating Gomez. (Quick recap: Justin and Selena started dating in 2010, split in 2012, got back together in 2013, split in 2014, reunited in late 2017 and split permanently in early 2018. Justin and Hailey started dating in 2014, split in 2016 and reconciled in June 2018, getting engaged and then married in a span of months. )
“They were not in a relationship” when she reconciled with Justin in June 2018, Hailey, 25, said emphatically. “As a woman, I would never want to get into a relationship with someone — and be engaged to them and be getting married to them — and [be] thinking the back of my mind: I wonder if that [door] was really closed. … I know for a fact that the reason we were able to get back together was because it was very much completely closed.”
So there was no overlap at any point? “No,” Hailey told host Alex Cooper. “Not one time. Let’s just put it this way: When [we] started hooking up … he was not ever in a relationship. At any point. I would never. It’s not my character to mess with someone’s relationship. … I was raised better than that. … I can say period point-blank: I was never with him when he was in a relationship with anybody. That’s the end of it.”
Hailey spoke more about Justin and Gomez’s brief reunion, that ended a few months before Justin proposed to Hailey. She said it was closure for the exes, who had a headline-making, on-and-off relationship over a span of eight years.
“It was the right thing for them to close that door,” she said of Justin and Selena’s final parting. “It closed a chapter. I think it was the best thing that could have happened for him to move on.”
Hailey talked about being the target of haters since Justin and Gomez split for good.
“A lot of the hate, and the perpetuation, comes from [the misperception], ‘Oh, you stole him,'” she said. “It comes from the fact that they wished he had ended up with someone else and that’s fine. You can wish that all you want but that’s just not the case.”
She added, “The only people that really know the truth of the situation and what the timeline really was and how it happened and how it went down are me and him. Perception is a really tricky thing because, when you’re watching something from the outside, you can see it one way. When it may not really be the reality of what happened behind closed doors.”
Hailey went on to reveal that she has has spoken to Gomez since she married Justin in September 2018. She said, “It’s all respect. It’s all love” between them. “There’s no drama.”
“That’s also why I feel like if everybody on our side knows what happened and we’re good and we could walk away from it with clarity and respect, then that’s fine,” she said. She said the conversation “brought me a lot of peace. I’m like, ‘Hey, we know what happened.’ It is what it is. You’re never going to be able to correct every narrative.”
Hailey spoke about the trolling she’s received from haters all these years. They’ve interrupted her Instagram Lives flooding her with hateful comments, and stood outside the Met Gala in 2021 to scream “Selena” when she and Justin walked the red carpet.
“Yes, I could hear everyone screaming,” she recalled. “I think there’s a certain part of you that has a numbness. … It was disrespectful to me, to my relationship. It just was. Period. The end. But I think I’ve endured so much disrespect — and I still do to this day — that there was like a part of me that was just like another day, another negative slay.”
Nonetheless, she added, “They’ve never ruined anything for me,” she said of haters. “They’re not ruining my life. They’re not ruining my happiness — and that I think Is really the win of the whole thing. You’re actually not taking anything away from me. So that’s what I just keep stepping forward with. … You cannot take away my happiness, my relationship, my business, my career. You can be mad about it but it doesn’t change anything.”
She said she wonders, “If we have moved on, why can’t you? That’s kind of just the whole thought process. It’s just hurtful. It’s bullying.”
Hailey was asked if she or Justin ever reached out to Selena ab out intervening with her fans and calling for them to stop harassing Hailey. The answer was no.
“What I will say is that she has been in this industry much longer than I have and maybe there’s something that she knows — like it wouldn’t fix anything,” Hailey replied.
Cooper suggested that Gomez simply liking one of Hailey’s social posts could put an end to a lot of the drama.
“I think that everyone is just trying to create separation,” Hailey replied, “even though there’s clearly not always separation. I have no expectation” of Gomez doing that. “I would never expect someone to do that for me. She doesn’t owe me anything. Neither of us owe anybody anything except respect. I respect her a lot. … If that was something that she felt was necessary, then that would be amazing.”
