SCI-FI HUMANITY ‘Roswell’ star Mason sees show as a love story
Despite the aliens in the sci-fi drama show “Roswell, New Mexico,” star Jeanine Mason sees her show as a human love story.
Mason stars as Liz — an illegal immigrant’s daughter who protects the secret alien identity of Max, her high school crush — in the CW show returning for its second season Monday.
“It feels like it is beyond the universe,” the 29-year-old actress told the Daily News. “All these elements line up for these two people to meet. It feels like, cellularly, it’s meant to be. Like it’s cosmically meant to be.”
The new season picks up almost exactly where the first season ended: Max dead on the ground of their mysterious lair after bringing Liz’s sister back to life. In another part of town, Max’s brotherin-law is dead, too, but his is a different story, one of an evil alien who took advantage of his loved ones, including wife Isobel, Max’s sister, played by Lily Cowles.
“What we see for Isobel is a woman who has everything stripped away from her and has to learn how to move forward,” Cowles, the 33-yearold daughter of actress Christine Baranski, told The News. “It’s intense amounts of grief, the loss of the two people who are closest to her in the world and navigating the violation.”
Among those violations are her husband taking advantage of his alien powers to use her body for violence, including killing Liz’s sister. Isobel, also an alien in disguise, has spent her entire life desperate to fit in, to not get found out.
“She’s always worn a mask, always lived behind these defensive walls she’d put up. Always played safe, done the right thing, looked the way she’s supposed to look, followed societal rules,” Cowles said. “She was so good at playing by the rules. But what playing by the rules has got her is nothing.”
Her husband is dead and, more importantly, a monster, but Isobel can’t tell anyone. Her brother is dead, sacrificed to save his girlfriend’s sister, but Isobel can’t tell anyone either, because, how do you explain aliens?
So she doesn’t. Instead, she lashes out and fights back.
“This is an opportunity to change her entire identity and how she sees herself,” Cowles said.
While Isobel works on strengthening her powers, Liz has holed herself up in a lab trying to find a cure for Max’s death. “She has to do this,” Mason said. “She’s not giving herself the option to not.”
It’s two vastly different reactions to the same event: one tries to move on, one tries to go back. But the characters are not so different, Cowles said. Both Liz and Isobel are taking matters into their own hands.
“Women have always been told, ‘You go rogue and you end up alone.’ ‘You break the rules and you end up rejected,’ ” Cowles said. “Often, the narrative doesn’t end well for women who don’t abide by the rules. We’re in a time now when that’s not true.”