Singer Hayley Kiyoko says she finally sees the “lesbian energy” on Wizards of Waverly Place that #Stalex shippers have been talking about.
While appearing on PodCo’s Wizards of Waverly Pod, the singer and actress responded to speculation about her character Stevie Nichols’ sexuality, and the potential she had to become a romantic interest for Selena Gomez‘s character, Alex.
“I was just like naturally very gay… I booked the role, and honestly, I had no notion or thoughts that there was some kind of like undertone or underlying storyline that was going on,” Kiyoko, who is openly lesbian, said. She appeared in just four episodes of the show in 2010 where she played Stevie, an evil wizard who befriends Alex.
“The lesbian energy was really thriving at that moment. But I was in the closet to the public at that time,” she said. She explained that she didn’t come out until 2015, when she released her single “Girls Like Girls.”
“It’s funny to look back and it’s really so much fun to hear the fans’ reactions to Stalex and the comments of everyone just being like, ‘This is so gay,'” she said. “So, I was just a baby Hayley in the closet at that time.”
Peter Murrieta, who served as an executive producer and writer during the show’s first three seasons, confirmed earlier this year that they intended to make Gomez’s character openly bisexual on the show.
During his own appearance on the Wizards of Waverly Pod, Murrieta said, “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.”
Podcast co-host Jennifer Stone, who also starred on Wizards as Harper Finkle, replied, “If we were just a few years down the line, we maybe could have played with that.”
“Disney Channel has had [LGBTQ] characters, and they did it. At that time it wasn’t a thing,” he said. “But, we got as close as we could. I mean it was pretty close. It was pretty much right there.”
If you wanted to catch up on the romance that could have been, Kiyoko starred in Season 3 of Wizards of Waverly Place, appearing in episodes 11 through 15.