Selena Gomez Has Been Spotted Having Fun With A Top Film Producer

After originally meeting on the set of In Dubious Battle back in 2016, Selena Gomez and film producer Andrea Iervolino have been spotted together this week celebrating her big 3-0. It’s not the first birthday they’ve marked together, either — three years ago Gomez, Iervolino, and a group of friends partied in Italy for her 27th. At the time, a source said they were just friends. “Selena and Andrea are nothing more than good friends and there’s no romance brewing between them whatsoever,” they told HollywoodLife. Their most recent sightings, however, suggest that the long-time pals have potentially been getting that much closer. But who is Andrea Iervolino, and how do the pair know each other?

Per the Daily Mail, the singer and actor has been setting sail around Italy’s Amalfi Coast to mark her milestone birthday. And aboard a luxury yacht, she and the producer were glimpsed chatting and laughing together as Gomez plucked up the courage to jump into the sea, with Iervolino offering her a supportive hand down the ladder.

An Italian-Canadian film producer and entrepreneur, 34-year-old Iervolino was born in the Southern Italian town of Cassino — and has risen to become one of the film industry’s leading indie producers, winning awards at Venice Film Festival and the Italian Contemporary Film Festival. Though his family once ran a successful haberdashery business, they went bankrupt when Iervolino was a kid: “We didn’t have any money,” he told the Financial Times.

After starting out selling mobile phones at school, Iervolino became a website designer in the early days of the internet’s expansion, and crowdfunded the money to pay for his first ever screenplay aged just sixteen. The result was a hit with the Italian government, who saw its potential as an educational film. After making an entire series of similar projects, Iervolino eventually built up the contacts to make the move across the Atlantic as a producer — and he’s now produced a huge number of films including Al Pacino-starring The Merchant Of Venice and the Selena Gomez-starring In Dubious Battle. “What I’m doing is my dream,” Iervolino said in 2017. “Every day is a dream, a vacation, because I enjoy it so much.”

Little is known about Iervolino’s relationship history, though he told the Financial Times that splitting from an early girlfriend in his teens was the catalyst for moving to Venice to break into the film and theatre industry. More recently, fans have wondered about the nature of his relationship with Gomez after they’ve been spotted spending time together on several occasions.

Though Selena Gomez hasn’t publicly been linked to anybody since splitting for good with Justin Bieber back in 2018, she’s definitely been teasing fans lately on TikTok. In a recent make-up tutorial from July 2022, her grandmother can be heard yelling in the background: “So how did you end it with that guy?!” A mortified Gomez replies: “I’ll tell you in a second!” When you find out, Nan, give us a shout, yeah?

Bustle has approached representatives of Selena Gomez for comment.