Netflix Selena Series Adds Ricardo Chavira and Gabriel Chavarría to Cast

Now that Netflix has cast their Selena, they’ve added Ricardo Chavira (Desperate Housewives) and Gabriel Chavarría (The Purge) to the cast to play her dad and her brother, respectively, in the upcoming scripted series about her life.

Mexican-American Ricardo Chavira is best known for his role as Carlos Solis on all eight seasons of Desperate Housewives and has also guest-starred on Jane the Virgin as Bruce, one of Xiomara’s former boyfriends.

Gabriel Chavarría, 30, plays the lead in USA Network/SyFy’s The Purge based on the film franchise and was the lead in the Emmy nominated Hulu series East Los High.

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Selena’s sister Suzette Quintanilla and her dad Abraham Quintanilla Jr. are both executive producers on the series, dubbing the Netflix series the “official story” of the late singer’s life. Much like the 1997 film starring Jennifer Lopez, the series will center around Selena’s rise to stardom as she also learned to navigate life with her family and life with her eventual husband, Chris Perez.

The latest cast update comes on the heels of the announcement that Christian Serratos of The Walking Dead, who is of Mexican and Italian descent, will play the role of the iconic Tejana singer. Serratos is best known as Rosita Espinosa on the long-running AMC show and she also played Angela Weber in the Twilight film series.

In a 2015 interview with MTV she said she’d like to play “somebody who is very famously Latina,” and this is undoubtedly a major opportunity to take on such a well known and beloved figure.

However, the announcement of the show was met with some backlash with fans saying the family shouldn’t revive her tragic story for the small screen but many others are excited to get a Quintanilla approved look into her life. Selena’s father is notorious for going after any projects about the late Tex-Mex singer that have not been approved by the Quintanilla family and rightfully so.

“Selena will always have a lasting place in music history and we feel a great responsibility to do justice to her memory,” Suzette Quintanilla said in a statement. “With this series, viewers will finally get the full history of Selena, our family, and the impact she has had on all of our lives.”

It has been 24 years since Selena’s death after she was murdered by her former fan club president at the age of 23. Selena remains a permanent fixture in the entertainment world, known as the “Queen of Tejano music.”

According to Elle, Netflix’s Selena series begins filming this month but there is no official release date.