Selena Gomez Was “At My Wits’ End” After Disney Didn’t Pick Up ‘Lizzie McGuire’, ‘Suite Life’ Spinoff Pilots

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Selena Gomez is returning to Waverly Place for another season on Sept. 12, nearly 20 years after her Disney Channel journey began.

The 8x Golden Globe nominee, who stars as Alex Russo on the Disney Channel‘s Wizards of Waverly Place (2007-’12) and the current reboot Wizards Beyond Waverly Place, recently recalled the two pilots of hers that didn’t make it to the network.

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“It was actually a weird thing because I was on three pilots for the Disney Channel,” she recalled on Therapuss podcast. “One was the spinoff of Lizzie McGuire, one was the spinoff of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and the last one was Wizards.

“So by then, 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 kind of thought, ‘OK, well this is not going to work out,'” explained Gomez.

After Gomez played Gwen in a 2006 episode of Suite Life (2005-’08), she filmed a pilot as a separate character for a spinoff titled Arwin!, in which Brian Stepanek’s eponymous engineer leaves the Tipton to help his sister raise her three kids, one of whom was played by Gomez.

In What’s Stevie Thinking?, Gomez starred as the titular Stevie Sanchez, the younger sister of Lalaine’s Miranda from Lizzie McGuire (2001-’04).

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Gomez said her “whole life changed” after Wizards of Waverly Place was picked up, adding, “It was an immediate feeling of, ‘Oh, I achieved my dream’ at that point in time. 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. I wear it proudly. I definitely am not ashamed of being part of the Disney high school experience.”

On Thursday, Disney Channel debuted a teaser for Season 2, which premieres with two episodes on Sept. 12, before all episodes are available Oct. 8 on Disney+.

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