When the interview with vanguard Developed entirely in English, Janine Mason says goodbye in an over-correct Castilian and promises to be the next note in Cervantes. Is this the protagonist of the series? Roswell, New Mexico, HBO, whose third season just aired in Spain, is the daughter of Cubans. After a distinguished television career, she landed her first leading role, buoyed by the fact that in this new adaptation of the youth book series, the character Liz had to be Latin. Mason admits that he is more than happy that this story about a group of aliens who live among humans without revealing their true identity has already been renewed for the fourth part.

What’s the most excited thing about this third season?

I feel like this year Liz is the woman I’ve always known. She feels very attached to her purpose in life and finds it on her own terms. In the past seasons they decided for her, but this time she chooses the best for her life, and that seemed very authentic to me, because it reflects who she is in her thirties. I feel like our writers are showing her as a woman this season. I’ve always seen her like this but she has matured on screen.

The interesting thing about this girl is that with the same passion she brings to her family’s restaurant, she does biochemistry research. It doesn’t seem to create a dilemma for you.

I don’t think many people notice this duality. It’s very simple: the pride of the family is his source of pride. To be a part of what her father built and the success he had in this country is a badge of honour. Every moment he spends in the restaurant is a shared moment in his father’s and family’s legacy in America. The restaurant uniform makes him very proud. Meanwhile, the fact that a scientist emerged from there is another reason why she feels so good about herself.

What is Liz’s best quality and what’s its worst flaw?

Often it happens that they are the same thing. With Liz I share a virtue and a disadvantage, which is that we are both very stubborn. This makes her a wonderful scientist, and at the same time someone who dares to question. But it also means that they often take certain things for granted without absorbing all the information they need and that they make decisions on a personal level that do not serve them. They are items that help build a great character to evolve throughout the series.

In the final episode, Liz wants to cure all of Earth’s diseases using alien DNA. Couldn’t be a more modern idea…

That’s how it is. Already in the second season we wanted to show that by coming into contact with these aliens who can heal themselves, she dreams of being able to put this ability in a syringe to be able to cure human diseases. One of the joys of telling a science fiction story is that you can often use great metaphors to talk about what is happening in real life. We were very lucky with this scene, because it speaks so accurately of the moment we are in. But the series itself also talks about a biochemical engineer, during a global pandemic in which we value scientists more than ever.

In the English language the word alien means a foreigner and an immigrant. It’s interesting how Roswell, New Mexico unites these two concepts…

It is one of the brightest elements in our version. Roswell It was first a book and then a series. It was the first time we realized this was one chain about another. There are reasons why we as a society are biased towards others. The fact that Liz in this version is Latin allowed us to talk about the other in a broader sense. When I started the series, in 2018, in the United States, we had a conversation about what it means to be American, to be naturalized and to have a status in which a human being can be considered promiscuous. It was great to be able to incorporate all of that into Liz’s story. We had the opportunity to breathe new life into a franchise so adored by audiences, and a homage to Latina’s existence as the backbone of history.