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Olga Tañon is opening up about her friendship with Selena Quintanilla during a recent interview with Enrique Santos. The singer revealed that they had planned to collaborate on a song with the iconic musician, and kept in touch with Selena even days before her tragic death.
The Puerto Rican queen of Merengue also revealed that she was first offered the role of Selena for the 1997 biopic, which ended up being Jennifer Lopez’s big break, catapulting her to fame and becoming the start of her successful career in the entertainment business.
“The love I had for Selena was something different,” Olga said about their friendship, admitting the reasons why she decided to pass on the opportunity. “I wasn’t an actress for that role,” she explained. “I didn’t know how to speak English at the time,” Olga continued, “I lived in Texas when everything went down, I was in Argentina on a promotional campaign, and the person who informed me about Selena’s death was Marc Anthony.”
Olga said during the interview that Marc told him he “was with Selena the night before,” adding that she was “leaving Argentina” when she learned about the tragic news, and “eight days” before she “had arranged to meet Selena.”
“We were going to do a duet together,” Olga said. “I know how to recognize my weaknesses, first I had to recognize that I didn’t know the language.” Despite rejecting the role, she says Jennifer was the perfect choice. “They couldn’t have chosen a person who looked more similar, which was Jennifer. That role was not for Tañón, it was for Jennifer because she did it identically and she did it wonderfully, I enjoyed it so much.”
“I couldn’t have said yes to something that I knew I was not going to do well. I didn’t even know the language, Selena was a gringo-Mexican, the way she spoke to me was very Americanized,” Olga concluded.