Big brother A.B. Quintanilla is responding to some of the criticism surrounding the show based on his late younger sister, Selena Quintanilla-Perez’s life, Selena: The Series.
In an interview with TMZ, A.B. says that he thinks people are being too judgmental or nitpicky with their critiques, especially when it comes to Christian Serratos, the actress who portrays the late Mexican-American icon. “I think Christian did an outstanding job of capturing that Selena that was kinda always cutting her hair, dying it different colors,” says the Latin Grammy Award winner. “I even heard some people saying that her lip synching was off, well, that was done on purpose because Selena’s lip synching was also a learning process. If you watch the series, and start watching the episodes, Christian starts slowly growing into that part, the lip synching slowly gets tighter because that was a problem that Selena had to overcome.”
Though he completely ignores the criticisms over the show’s machismo or complete lack of Selena as a main character, Quintanilla claims that when he watches Christian perform as Selena, “I kinda found myself thinking that she reminds me of my sister when she was going through some of those quirky stages.”
The critics have called out the differences in Serratos’ appearance compared to the Tejano singer, particularly citing her lighter skin tone, smaller lips and hips, and less mestizo appearance. Colorism is not new to the Latino community, but Quintanilla dismisses any such claims and believes that if his late sister were alive today to see the series, she “would have been ecstatic! She would have been as happy as I am, as my whole family is.”