Netflix’s Selena: The Series is revealing a new look at the life of Selena Quintanilla.
In the new trailer, released by Netflix on Monday, October 26, the Walking Dead alum Christian Serratos takes on the role of the Queen of Tejano Music.
The two-part series explores Quintanilla’s journey from growing up in Texas to becoming a successful singer. Quintanilla was shot and killed by her fan club president, Yolanda Saldívar, in March 1995. She was only 23.
“I’d really describe Selena: The Series as a culmination of the work that we have put in to build a company that could highlight these types of themes, these types of stories, and bring it to a mainstream market,” producer Jaime Dávila told The Los Angeles Times in an interview posted on Monday. “More than anything, we’re trying to show Hollywood that there’s this huge market of Latinx/Latino people; that our stories are American stories; that our stories are global stories. Being able to point to a story like Selena: The Series, which is all of those things, is really great. I would love for more doors to open up.”
The drama arrives nearly 23 years after the film, Selena, was released, in which Jennifer Lopez portrayed the Mexican American singer.
“We’re not going to deny that the movie has a special place in everyone’s hearts,” Rico Martinez, head of content at Campanario Productions, told The L.A. Times. “It evokes an emotion that is hard to describe, and it will always have that emotional pull with audiences. We will never touch that. We will never take away from that. When you’re doing two seasons’ worth of 18 episodes, it’s going to be a different story. We’re trying to tell this complete story from her birth until the end, and that involves everything that the family did to help Selena get there — because their stories, the story as they told us, isn’t just the story of Selena. It’s the story of their family. So, we’re telling the complete story of the entire band and viewpoints that we’ve never seen before.”
However, the series will be “showing so much more,” Dávila, said, noting that the show will dive into the behind-the-scenes making of many songs and more of a look at the Quintanilla family in the ’80s.
The first half of the series, which stars Ricardo Chavira as Abraham Quintanilla and Gabriel Chavarria as Selena’s brother, A.B., debuts on Netflix on Friday, December 4.
