A controversial bestseller about Selena Quintanilla’s life is en route to Telemundo.
Noting that it took her 20 years to find the perfect team to make it happen, Puerto Rican journalist María Celeste Arrarás took to Facebook on Monday (Jan. 16) to announce the adaptation of her 1997 tell-all, Selena’s Secret: The Revealing Story Behind Her Tragic Death.
“It is a story very different from the official one that was told immediately after her murder. It turns out in the months before her death, Selena wasn’t as happy as many thought,” she wrote in Spanish. “She was living through a tumultuous time in her life, surrounded by people who loved her but also wanted to manipulate her. She felt that she was being pulled in different directions and she was torn. Selena was about to make decisions in her life that were going to change her personal and professional life forever.”
The author later shared she has no doubts about the upcoming show’s shot at breaking records in the same way that her book found success upon its release. “This true story of our beloved Selena has all of the ingredients of a telenovela: lies, love, betrayal, suspense and a lot more,” she explained. “It is a controversial story, but it is also a real story that is handled with the utmost respect for her memory.”
According to Latina, Suzette Quintanilla disagrees. The older sister to the late Tejano queen took to Instagram to slam Arrarás, who she accused of relying on Selena’s killer Yolanda Saldívar to sell a false narrative to the world. “Your book is based on a whole bunch of lies,” she said via Instagram Stories. “Your source is a person who killed, cold-heartedly murdered, my sister, shot her in the back and left her to die.”
This isn’t the first time Selena’s family has fought to protect her legacy in recent months. Back in December, Abraham Quintanilla, Jr. filed a lawsuit against his daughter’s widower Chris Perez and Endemol Shine North America for developing a television series about the singer’s love life without permission from her estate.