Netflix’s Selena TV Show Has Found Its Selena
By
Maria Elena Fernandez
Selena Quintanilla and Christian Serratos. Photo: Getty Images and Shutterstock
Bidi bidi bom bom! Netflix’s upcoming
Selena: The Series has cast Christian Serratos of
The Walking Dead to play the Queen of Tejano music, a source close to the show has told Vulture.
Serratos, a 28-year-old of Mexican and Italian descent who grew up in Los Angeles, has played Rosita Alvarez on
The Walking Dead since the AMC drama’s fourth season. She also starred on the Nickelodeon series
Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide and in the
Twilight Saga movies.
Executive produced byMoisés Zamora (
Star and
American Crime),
Selena: The Series will tell the coming-of-age story of one of music’s biggest Latino crossover artists. In 1995, Selena Quintanilla was shot and killed at age 23 by her business associate Yolanda Saldívar, who is serving a life sentence. Her posthumous crossover album,
Dreaming of You, released the year she died, debuted atop the
Billboard 200, a first for a Latin artist. The Netflix series will follow the choices the young music and fashion icon and her family made to build her career.
Selena’s story was previously told in Gregory Nava’s 1997 feature biopic
Selena, starring Jennifer Lopez in her breakout role. Prior to the film’s release, the Latino community protested the decision to cast the Nuyorican actress and demanded the role be recast, but public perception changed after fans saw how Lopez embodied the Tex-Mex performer, especially in
the film’s opening concert scene at the Astrodome.
Selena: The Series is designed to play out over two seasons andwill begin production in Mexico within the next month. Selena’s father, Abraham Quintanilla Jr., her sister Suzette Quintanilla, and family attorney Simran A. Singh serve as executive producers. Netflix declined to comment on Serratos’s casting.