Selena’s story told in depth on Netflix
Eighteen-part series offers details of singer’s childhood, family life
Grammy-winning singer Selena Quintanilla-Perez died in 1995, at 23, at a Days Inn in Corpus Christi, Texas, shot in the back by the president of her first fan club. Her unfinished fifth album, “Dreaming of You,” topped the Billboard 200 three months later.
An artist who recorded mostly Tejano music — a regional fusion of corrido, mariachi and polka rooted in South Texas — and who died on the verge of broader success, Selena is arguably as popular in 2020 as at any moment during her life. In her first hit song, “Como La Flor” (1992), she compares herself to a withering flower. But more than 25 years after her death, Selena fandom blooms and blooms and blooms.
Drake wears her airbrushed face on a T-shirt. Cardi B covers her songs. Beyoncé identifies as a fan. In downtown Corpus Christi stands a life-size bronze statue of Selena, dressed in bustier and motorcycle boots — an outfit much like the one the Smithsonian sometimes displays.
On Friday, Netflix released the first part of “Selena: The Series,” nine episodes — of a planned 18 — that follow the singer’s tour-bus-driven journey. A gentle show, tailored to the rhythms of a family dramedy, it takes Selena (Madison Taylor Baez as child Selena, Christian Serratos as the young adult) from baby crooner to bedazzled pop idol. Offering intimate details of her childhood and family life, the show portrays Selena as both a typical American girl and a born superstar.
“This is not a documentary,” Suzette Quintanilla, Selena’s sister and an executive producer, said cheerfully. “It’s sprinkled with a little bit of glitter.”
Selena’s career burned bright and brief, like a backyard sparkler. Born in Lake Jackson, Texas, in1971, to second-generation Mexican-American parents (her mother, Marcella Quintanilla, also has Native American ancestry), Selena was the youngest of three children. In 1981, she and her siblings, Suzette and A.B. Quintanilla, began to perform at their parents’ restaurant as Selena y Los Dinos. Selena learned Spanish phonetically to sing Tejano music. The band released its first album in 1984, recording on small labels until signing with EMI Latin in 1989.
In 1992, Selena eloped with Chris Perez, a former guitarist in her band. They moved into an unassuming brick house next door to her parents and sister, two down from her brother, who wrote many of her songs. She booked a few acting roles, signed as a spokesperson for soft drinks and shampoo, opened two boutiques that carried her rhinestone-studded designs. On March 31, 1995, in the midst of recording her “crossover” album, she was
murdered by Yolanda Saldivar, a former nurse with a history of embezzlement. Tens of thousands of fans viewed her coffin during a12-hour visitation at the Corpus Christi convention centre.
Jaime Davila, an executive producer on the series, spent his childhood in McAllen, Texas, listening to Selena’s songs at birthdays and weddings.
“It’s been special my entire life, her story,” he said. A few years ago, a colleague introduced him to Suzette Quintanilla and they agreed to collaborate on Selena’s story.
Davila’s production company, Campanario, then pitched the series to Francisco Ramos, Netflix’s vice-president for content for Latin America.
Of course, Selena has already received the onscreen biographical treatment, in a beloved 1997 movie that launched the career of Jennifer Lopez, which the family also authorized. But this version — 18 epi
sodes of about 40 minutes each — provides more detail and answers some of the fan questions that have accumulated over the years. “Like, ‘How did this happen?’ or ‘How did this song get created?’ ” Quintanilla said. She shared stories and memorabilia with the writers, creating a series — with its occasional scenes of financial hardship and shopping with food stamps — that feels less “sugar-coated” than the film, she said.
Still, the scripts never centre on any particular struggle for long. Tensions resolve. Obstacles crumble. The episodes underscore hard work, familial loyalty, the glittery gift of Selena’s talent. The show takes a few liberties with fact and timeline, Davila admitted. “But I would say the emotions of it are 100 per cent authentic — that’s what we were going for.”
Could Selena possibly have been as sunshiny, as generous, as self-possessed as she appears in Serrato s’ performance? Aside from changing her hairstyle perhaps too often, was she really without flaws?
Pretty much, her sister said. “Unless you woke her up. That was probably the grouchiest you were ever going to get from her.”
The series, which was shot at Baja Studios in Rosarito, Mexico, splits the biographical difference between extraordinary and ordinary. If the show makes the most of Serratos’ charisma and glow, episodes emphasize the day-to-day grind of gigging musicians: rehearsing, travelling, performing for crowds small and large, humping gear back to the bus.
“We were just a normal family,” Quintanilla said. “The only difference really is that we all came together to create music.”
The emphasis on the everyday has another purpose. Selena’s early death and her public mourning reduced her to a particular iconography: an airbrushed face, an empty jacket. Scenes of home perms and family dinners and tour bus goofing off reconstitute her as a person, not a tragic symbol.
“Selena: The Series” negotiates her identity as simultaneously Mexican-American and all-American. In one scene, Selena’s father, Abraham Quintanilla, objects to the exoticized image chosen for an album cover. “What is so exotic about Corpus Christi?” Abraham (Ricardo Chavira) complains to an EMI executive. “She is an American girl who just happens to be able to sing in Spanish.”
“People don’t understand the Latino community in the United States,” Davila said. “They don’t get us. One of the reasons is because you don’t see us onscreen.” He started Campanario and produced “Selena” to help change that.
Suzette Quintanilla understands her family’s cultural identity this way: “Our ancestors are from Mexico, but we are born and raised third-generation here in the U.S. and we are American. It’s OK to embrace both sides.”