Only Murders Role Similar to Wizards of Waverly Place

Selena Gomez’s days on Disney Channel may be long gone, but the ‘Only Murders in the Building’ star still holds the time in her heart.

The 29-year-old “Love You Like a Love Song” singer feels her Hulu series is an offshoot of her old sitcom, Wizards of Waverly Place.

She explained that her character in Only Murders, Mabel, is a more mature adaptation of her Disney character, Alex Russo.

“Wizards of Waverly Place” ended a decade ago, but Gomez is still using “1000%” skills from the show while filming the crime show, she recently said on The Awardist podcast.

“I feel like Mabel is an older version of Alex in a way,” she joked.

“I loved being on this show so much. I felt like I learned a lot. We actually had great writers — we had two writers that worked on ‘Friends’ — and we had an incredible director that we used for most of our seasons,” Gomez said.

“Wizards” lasted 106 episodes and aired from 2007 to 2012. The series followed Alex, a teenage sorceress as she navigates high school life with her friends and family, getting caught up in a mess of chaos along the way.

“We were really lucky. I still look back on it and laugh at certain things just because I thought it was so much fun and we tried,” Gomez noted.

The ‘Spring Breakers’ star also opened up about Mabel’s scathingly funny, sarcastic demeanor and how she was able to improvise her acting alongside her co-stars Steve Martin and Martin Short.

“We would have these freedom shots where they would throw something at me,” Gomez said.

The Texas native then pointed out that her “reaction, honestly, is what I think my character would do, because half the time I’m like, ‘I don’t understand what you’re trying to do, but it’s working. ‘”

“[Mabel has] rubbed off on me a little. I love going fast and I steal Steve and Marty’s jokes from time to time. She’s fun,” Gomez teased.