

But that project was ultimately shelved in favor of the Netflix show, which focuses on the early life of Selena proper.
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Working with the Quintanilla family, Dávila first developed a series “inspired by” Selena’s life for Disney. 4, shows the bigger picture of what the family went through as its youngest child rose to stardom. The story depicted within “Selena: The Series,” especially the nine-episode part launching Dec. Netflix, on the other hand, “immediately got it,” he says, because “they are a global company and could see things from a bigger picture.” And so, I think, hopefully what the series does is break those barriers that currently exist for everyone.”
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We’re still facing what Selena faced in the late ’80s and early ’90s, which is a mainstream entertainment not sure how to categorize us, even though the audience already has. Because we come from two worlds and because some of us speak another language, people don’t know, necessarily, where to put us. “One of the hard parts whenever you’re trying to sell or produce Latinx stories in Hollywood is that Hollywood isn’t as familiar with them.

They weren’t aware, really, of her legacy,” Dávila says. “When you talk to American buyers, a lot of them didn’t know how big Selena was. “One of the things we investigate with the series is why she had to sing in Spanish, and hopefully that also elucidates a little bit for people what it means for a Mexican American in today’s world, where people are like, ‘What do I do with you?’ But I’m just like you,” says Dávila.Īlthough millions of fans have loved Quintanilla for decades, not many of those fans were found in executive offices when Dávila was trying to sell a series about her life.

That Quintanilla was a young Mexican American woman who sang primarily in Spanish offered legions of fans something for which they had been yearning: someone who looked like them achieving the American dream. They started out playing at the family restaurant and small venues and events such as weddings, but their talent and their drive pushed them to bigger and better things, including signing with EMI Latin in 1989. “What transcends for Selena and what I hope transcends for the series is the emotion she gives.” She also had a fairy-tale-like story: a schoolgirl who had talent like no other, trained and taught by her father, performing with her siblings in a wholesome family band. Quintanilla has endured as an important figure in pop culture because “she was one of the most talented musicians, I would say, of all time,” says Dávila.
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She became more famous after she died.” He adds, “For people who have been watching Spanish-language TV for 20 years, there has been nobody bigger than Selena.” “When she died, people really had no idea how popular she was. “At the moment that she died, she was trying to cross over into the Anglo market,” De Molina recalls. The stronghold of her popularity was northern Mexico and southern Texas. Raúl De Molina, the longtime host of Univision’s “El Gordo y la Flaca,” was an entertainment reporter at Telemundo at the height of Selena’s career.
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Jennifer Lopez portrayed her in a feature film in 1997 Quintanilla was named the “top Latin artist of the 1990s” by Billboard at the end of that decade, and a decade and a half later she was still being celebrated with a new figure at Madame Tussauds Hollywood, a makeup line by MAC cosmetics and an exhibit at the National Museum of American History, in addition to the museum her family set up for remembrance. In the years since, she amassed millions more fans around the world, with her posthumous crossover album, “Dreaming of You,” setting a record for sales on its day of release (175,000 copies, the most ever at the time for a female singer). Selena Quintanilla was an icon in life but became a legend after her untimely death in 1995, when she was shot and killed at the age of 23.
