‘Selena: The Series’ Creators Slam Netflix’s Mishandling of Series: “I Should’ve Seen These Red Flags”

Just a month after the series debuted its Part 2 on Netflix, the creators of Selena: The Series are speaking out about the platform’s mishandling of the series. In a feature penned by the L.A. Times, several key creators involved in the project opened up about their negative experiences working with the streamer. In interviews with the show’s consultants, executive producers, and the lead showrunner, the creative team opened up about lack of time, being underpaid, and their desire to be “treated equally” to other Netflix Projects.

The series, which follows the rise of a young Selena Quintanilla (Christian Serratos) from South Texas as she leaned into her Spanish roots to achieve mainstream success, seemed ready to join the ranks of Netflix’s roster of big-budget U.S. originals. Instead, it was ordered as a Latin American original and given a slimmer budget, well under $2 million per episode, sources told the L.A. Times. (For reference, The Crown is reported to receive around $13 million per episode.)

“The show sort of experienced what Selena experienced,” said co-executive producer Henry Robles. “From the beginning, she wanted to sing in English. But people didn’t know what to do with her. The music industry didn’t know how to categorize [her] or they expected certain things of her because she was Mexican American. And it’s similar to this show.”

Gladys Rodriguez worked on Selena: The Series as a consultant about the life of Tejano pop-star, jumping aboard the project back in 2019. Though it seemed like a dream job, everything didn’t shape up the way she expected.

“I should have seen these red flags in the beginning,” Rodriguez said.

She was credited as a co-executive producer on the series, and said she now has “a little bit of PTSD” from her time on the show. “I feel like our work was cheapened from the start. We were never given a fair chance,” Rodriguez said. “Representation is what we want but it goes beyond that — we want to be treated equally.”

The Writers Guild of America has rules for writer compensation rate on streaming series based on episode length, episodic budget, and the number of subscribers to the platform. Selena‘s budget was below the guild’s then-threshold of $2.5 million per episode for one-hour “high-budget” series, meaning that production could negotiate writers’ pay lower than usual Netflix “high-budget” series.

Some Selena staffers told the L.A. Times they made between 30 percent and 50 percent per week less working on the series, which was filmed in Mexico, than the typical pay for series filmed in the States. A Netflix spokesperson told the L.A. Times that “the company believes the writers were compensated fairly based on quotes negotiated by their U.S. representation.”

The pay was especially low for the amount of workflow they were expected to accomplish — 18 episodes in just 20 weeks — and the schedule was eventually extended by four months.

When Selena was released on Netflix, it spent its first week in Netflix’s No. 1 spot in their daily Top 10 Shows and Movies on the platform. Showrunner Moisés Zamora opened up about creating the show, calling it a “learning experience.”

“The fact that we were able to get 14 Latinx writers to take on this thing, with all the challenges we faced … my goal is to continue making the case that our stories are worth telling — they deserve as much as any other production,” he said. “I’m really proud that we got to make an incredible show given what we were given.”

Stream Selena on Netflix