From omelet to octopus, Selena Gomez gets quarantine busy with TV cooking show

LOS ANGELES: Singer-actress Selena Gomez has been cooking up a storm during the coronavirus lockdown and is now ready to share her hilarious and sometimes embarrassing efforts with the rest of the world.

“Selena + Chef,” a 10-episode unscripted series in which famous chefs appear remotely to teach Gomez to cook dishes ranging from omelets to octopus, gets its debut on the HBO MAX streaming platform on Aug. 13.

It was shot using remote cameras inside Gomez’s kitchen in her Los Angeles area home where the “Lose You to Love Me” singer was in quarantine with her grandparents and three friends.

“I thought this would be something lighthearted, because I was getting definitely down,” Gomez, 28, told television reporters during a preview on Wednesday.

“This was an opportunity to make people smile. I hope they are going to laugh because I look like a fool,” said Gomez, whose 185 million Instagram following is one of the largest in the world. “I love cooking, I just don’t know how to do it all the time.”

Spills, burns and sometimes inedible dishes emerge as chefs including Antonia Lofaso, Ludo Lefebvre and Roy Choi appear on screen from their own kitchens to teach the former Disney Channel star how to tackle pasta, tacos, cookies and other meals.

The octopus did not go so well. “People really didn’t like that,” Gomez recalled. And the French omelet turned out to be more complicated than she envisaged. “It was really difficult because I am so used to doing it the American way,” said Gomez.

Gomez said she has made several of the dishes again since filming ended, but asked what she was best at whipping up fast she kept to her old favorites.

“I can kill PB and J,” she said of her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.