Selena Gomez Used to Think Barney Was ‘Hot’

Selena Gomez may be dating Justin Bieber, but she used to have a thing for Barney.

During a recent interview with BBC Radio 1, the 25-year-old singer revealed she once had a crush on the famed purple dinosaur — well, the man behind the costume, anyway. "He was [hot]. Very much so," she said, adding that she and Demi Lovato, with whom she co-starred on Barney & Friends back in the early 2000s, would talk about it when they were kids.

“You have to be very fit to do that because it’s 50 pounds of costumes," Gomez continued. "So he’d take it off and he’d have his muscles and he’s sweating and we’re like, ‘Okay, we are children,’ but it was great.”

She also clarified that there were many iterations of Barney over the years, but that "the one [they] got" was "pretty great."

Since Gomez and Lovato appeared in the series from 2002 to 2004, it's unlikely they crossed paths with David Joiner, who played the schoolyard pal from 1991 to 2001 and now works as a tantra massage specialist and spiritual healer. Which means that, somewhere out there, there's still a onetime Barney who made two 8-year-old pop stars swoon.

Watch Gomez explain around the five-minute mark below.

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