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Everything was not what it seemed.
Despite rising to fame portraying Alex Russo on Disney Channel’s “Wizards of Waverly Place” in 2007, Selena Gomez wasn’t sure the show would happen.
At the time, the young star, now 33, was making her rounds at Disney, but nothing was getting greenlit.
“I was on three pilots for the Disney Channel,” Gomez shared while on the “Therapuss With Jake Shane” podcast on Wednesday.
“One was the spinoff of ‘Lizzie McGuire,’ one was the spinoff of ‘The Suite Life of Zach and Cody,’ and the last one was ‘Wizards.’ So all of them didn’t get picked up, and I was just kind of at my wits’ end, but not in a bad way. I just thought, ‘Okay, well, this isn’t going to work out.’”
“Wizards” ended up being the one pilot to land.
“‘Wizards’ got picked up, and my whole life changed after that,” Gomez recalled. “It was an immediate feeling of, ‘Oh, I achieved my dream’ at that point in time.”
The sitcom ran for four seasons until 2012. Viewers watched the dynamic between Alex and her brothers Justin (David Henrie) and Max (Jake T. Austin), along with their parents Jerry (David DeLuise) and Theresa (Maria Canals-Barrera), play out.
The Russo family came from a long line of wizards, and the kids had to learn how to use their powers before they lost them — all while balancing being teens.
The pilot took off when Gomez was just 15. However, she previously appeared on “Barney & Friends” from 2002 to 2004.
“I was such a huge fan of the channel. I was a huge fan of what they did for our generation, and it was an honor,” she gushed. “I wear it proudly. I definitely am not ashamed of being part of the Disney high school.”
In 2024, Disney launched the show’s reboot “Wizards Beyond Waverly Place,” where Gomez reprised her character for two episodes.
The actress also serves as an executive producer on the show. Season 2 returns next month.
Along with going back to her roots, Gomez also stars on Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building” with Steve Martin and Martin Short.
The trio will return for their fifth season starting on September 9.
Gomez detailed just how amazing it has been to star in the murder mystery series with two comedic legends.
“Sometimes it’s just impossible to keep a straight face for me,” she admitted to Numero Magazine in 2024. “They are much better at it than me. I love comedy and I have so much fun on set. And I think it is mainly thanks to the writing and to the scriptwriters.”
The show quickly became a fan-favorite. Gomez accepted their first SAG Award win for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series this past winter.
“Wait, we never win,” she began in her speech. “This is so weird. OK, well, Marty and Steve aren’t here. You know, they don’t really care. But I just—I don’t know what to say.”
Gomez added, “Oh, and thank you to Marty and Steve. They raised me.”
The star also stepped into the entrepreneurial space, founding her beauty brand Rare Beauty in 2020.
Additionally, she recently dropped her fourth studio album, “I Said I Love You First,” in collaboration with her fiancé, Benny Blanco.
The couple got engaged at the end of last year after dating for a year. In March, Blanco, 37, revealed that the surprise engagement almost didn’t go as planned.
“It was the sickest surprise that she had no idea about and it couldn’t have come at a better time because I was starting to f–k up. The thing that makes me so crazy is, you’re getting engaged, and right before, they’re like, ‘Show me how good of a liar you are. Sneak around and try to do this perfect thing without me knowing.’ At the end, she was starting to get upset because she was like, ‘Why aren’t you coming home tonight?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I’m just at my friends,’” the producer said during a sit down with Interview Magazine in February. “I almost did it early. But I nailed it, I think.
Meanwhile, Gomez chimed in about what it was like to work together in the studio.
“The fact that he listened to me,” the Rare Beauty founder told the outlet about what she loved most about the process.
“Sometimes it’s difficult for me to speak up. Most of my anxiety right now is wanting him to speak because I feel like he’s more talented than I am in this field. It’s like working with a great filmmaker,” she went on. “Whether we were together or not, I think he still would’ve listened to everything that I had to say, and he was able to almost transcribe it into music, into what the feeling of what I was talking about should be.”