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. I mean it wasprettyclose. It was pretty much right there.”
Gomez spent five years, 106 episodes and one television movie as the face of Disney Channel’s “Wizards of Waverly Place” franchise. She recently appeared on the podcast and told her co-hosts that she regretted losing touch with the “Waverly Place” cast after the show ended and she became a massive pop star.
“I think I slowly became kind of shamed. I felt ashamed of the decisions that I made,” Gomez told the hosts. “I didn’t want you guys to see me in the state that I was in, because A, you would have told me the truth, which terrifies me, and B, I didn’t want to let you down.”
Gomez was referring to her mental health struggles, which were exacerbated in her post-Disney years given the heightened and extreme media attention surrounding her personal life. The actor said that when she started her run on “Wizards of Waverly Place” she never expected to find a second family, as her parents divorced when she was five years old.
“At the beginning, I was like, ‘Well, I just don’t want a new family,’” Gomez said. “I felt like I bonded with everyone. Little did I know that I ended up with everyone I needed to be in my life. I think I felt safe, and that’s a really hard thing for me to feel. I know that you guys love me for me. There’s not really… You guys genuinely loved me, and that’s all I could have asked for, the unconditional trust and bond we had, I miss so much.”
Watch the latest episode of the “Wizards of Waverly Pod” podcast in the video below.
