Selena Gomez’s ‘Waverly Place’ Character Would’ve Been Bisexual, Head Writer Says ‘We Weren’t Able’ to Make It Explicit: ‘We Got as Close as We Could’
variety.comZack Sharf Digital News Director Peter Murrieta served as an executive producer and the head writer of Disney Channel’s “Wizards of Waverly Place” for its first three seasons, and he confirmed on the latest episode of the “Wizards of Waverly Pod” podcast that it was the creative team’s intention to make Selena Gomez’s main character openly bisexual.
Gomez’s Alex had several male love interests during the show’s run, including Mason (Gregg Sulkin) and Dean Moriarty (Daniel Samonas), but Murrieta wishes she would’ve had a female love interest with the introduction of Stevie Nichols (Hayley Kiyoko) in Season 3. “Easy, easy, easy, easy,” Murrieta said when asked what storyline he wished he could’ve explored. “I wished we could have played more with what was quite obvious to a lot of us was the relationship between Stevie and Alex.
But we weren’t able to in that time…it was pretty clear to all of us what that relationship was. That would’ve been fun.” Alex and Stevie met in detention, but Stevie was only included in four episodes of the series before she was written off. “If we were just a few years down the line, we maybe could have played with that,” said podcast co-host Jennifer Stone, who played Alex’s best friend, Harper Finkle, in the show. “Disney did it!
They have had [LGBTQ characters],” Murrieta added, referring to Disney Channel shows with openly gay characters such as “The Owl House” and “Andi Mack.” “At the time it wasn’t a thing,” he said about having LGBTQ characters on Disney. “But, we got as close as we could.
