casting

Netflix’s Selena TV Show Has Found Its Selena

Selena Quintanilla and Christian Serratos.
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 by Moisés 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 and will 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.

Netflix’s Selena TV Show Has Found Its Selena