In an era of picture-perfect profiles, curated personas, and meticulously edited portraits, Lizeth Selene is an unyielding black sheep. Amid the rubble of heartbroken destruction, she rises from the discarded tissues and debris—vulnerable, sincere, and primed to divulge it all on her upcoming EP. “It’s a journey through my broken heart, for many reasons in life, navigating the deepest and bluest waters we carry inside us,” she tells V. “It’s about sinking, getting lost, crying, screaming, breaking apart… only to rise again as a better version of yourself.” While the musical venture is a personal recount of a narrative that has come to shape Selene, the actress turned singer-songwriter’s story does not start there.

Before Selene burst onto the music scene, the 26-year-old talent first starred in the teen drama Rebelde, a telenovela centered around the melodramas of an elite private school. Selene portrayed Andi, a young queer woman rebellious in spirit and fluent in the drums. Pulled into Andi’s fiery orbit, the fledgling actress found herself resonating with a decidedly tough character of an underlying tenderness. “Thanks to that project, I decided to keep acting, take more classes, go to more castings, and really professionalize my craft,” she explains. “I started taking control of the roles I wanted to play, who reached out. To me, what stories made me feel something, and what I wanted to express through them.”

Fast forward several years, and Selene is now set to star in three upcoming projects—the Spanish dramedy series Yellow, the Max Original show Vgly, and Prime Video’s upcoming series, Cometierra, starring opposite Mexican actress Yalitza Aparicio (Roma). Yet, her participation in each endeavor is far from an attention-grab. In fact, Selene’s methodology reflects the exact opposite. “I don’t want to take on projects that don’t fulfill me,” she says. “I’d rather wait three years for a project I gave my all to, rather than do something every month that doesn’t represent me.”

And this ethos rings true. Her character in Yellow, a sweet, nonetheless expressive, individual named Nico, is the complete opposite of Rebelde’s Andi, yet Selene found facets of her own person reflected in Nico’s identity. “It was easy to find myself in her,” she tells V. “That sensitivity was always inside me, but I didn’t know how to bring it out… Nico did that. She helped me find a balance between my light and darkness.”

Amongst the avalanche of personalities the actress channeled, an amalgamation of each temper, trait, and spirit was inevitable.This summer, Selene plans to release the first single from her upcoming EP. “It’s an explosion of everything that is Selene,” she teases. “There are deeper, more atmospheric, more cinematic sounds coming. It’s my soul speaking. Just like my acting—taking on more daring characters with unique and varied personalities.” In a poetic twist of musical fate, a treasure trove of identity is disguised as an EP, several years (and characters) in the making, and frankly, we can’t wait for Selene to be unearthed. 

This story appears in the pages of V154: now available for purchase!

Photography Olivia Malone

Fashion Karolyn Pho

Creative Director / Editor-in-Chief Stephen Gan

Editor Kevin Ponce

Hair Lauren Palmer Smith (Forward Artists) using Bumble & Bumble

Makeup Zaheer Sukhnandan using MAC Cosmetics

Producer Suze Lee

Location The Revery LA

1st Photo Assistant Patrick Molina

2nd Photo Assistant Camille Rice

Digital Technician Dustin Edwards

Stylist Assistants Sydney Englehart, Kyle Lynch

Hair Assistant Drew Martin

Production Assistant Andrew Amann