Daniel Samonas Recalls Selena Gomez's Reaction To Their First On-screen Kiss On Disney Show

Daniel Samonas, the Disney actor who starred with Selena Gomez in Wizards of Waverly Place, was left clueless about his kiss scene with the songstress. Recently, he appeared on Wizards of Waverly Pod podcast and recalled how he lacked the skill to properly kiss as a teenager which left his co-star Gomez feeling "icky." 

"Nobody coached me on how to do a Disney kiss," Samonas complained. He played the role of Dean Moriarty, a love interest of Gomez's character Alex Russo for nine episodes. Apparently, he was 18 years old back then when they filmed the show and lamented on the podcast how the producers left him on his own to perform the rather technical kissing scene, per HuffPost. 

The podcast is co-hosted by Jennifer Stone, one of the cast members of the Disney show who played Alex's BFF Harper, and David DeLuise, who played Alex's dad. Stone interjected and said back then, a kiss only meant a brief "peck" on each other's lips, "It's this weird rigor mortis thing," she quipped. 

Samonas explained the challenge, "I was 18 at the time, so imagine what I'm up to in my personal life," adding, "I was also smoking cigarettes at the time 'cause that was cool in my head. I was smoking on set, trying to sneak it, so they came up to me and made sure I had multiple breath mints before we even approached the scene. But nobody talked to me about the actual kiss." 

Meanwhile, he also noted that the kiss felt particularly weird because Gomez was dating one of the Jonas Brothers, Nick Jonas. So she wasn't too cooperative either. "She was dating Nick Jonas at the time," he mentioned, revealing the Single Soon singer's reaction, "So that was kind of like, 'Oh, they're gonna make me kiss another dude." 

"I can't speak for anybody else's opinions or thoughts." He further recounted, "We go to do the kiss. No rehearsals because we're doing one and done; we're moving on. We're not gonna make Selena do multiple kisses with another dude, right?" 

He then said the kiss didn't need any rehearsal because it was "one and done" sort of. "[The producers are] like, 'One, two, three, kiss!' And I go, 'OK.' So, I kissed her like I would kiss somebody I was on a date with — sorry Selena," speaking of his embarrassment. However, it didn't go as planned. 

The producers called him on a side which hinted he made a blunder, "I got pulled aside. I think she was somewhat appalled, maybe because I did it wrong. And they gave me a talking to, like, 'OK, this is not how we do this on the show,'" recounted Samonas. 

Co-host DeLuise reassured him, "Daniel, you didn't do anything wrong. You did what an actor does, which is, 'I'm gonna make this as real as possible,'" arguing, "You should have been told, 'This is how we do this on the show.' 100%, you should have been given that information." 

The second season of Disney's signature show Wizards of Waverly Place is in the making and executive produced by original stars Selena Gomez and her small screen sibling David Henrie, per Deadline.