It’s always a delight to have the opportunity to speak with an actor more than once. Not so long ago, I was fortunate enough to chat with Jeanine Mason about her starring role on Apple TV’s animated adventure series, WondLa, as the heroic and self-sacrificing Eva Nine.
She takes on a very different character in the upcoming second season of Prime Video’s Cross. (Or does she?) As a ruthless and skilled vigilante, Mason’s Rebecca meticulously targets and executes corrupt and horrid billionaires, putting her at odds with Aldis Hodge’s Alex Cross, who is brought in to protect one such billionaire.
[The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.]
What were you told about the role of Rebecca?
I was pitched that she was going to be a villain, certainly, but that it would be the question of vigilantism and that it would dance in that line. I was excited about being bad, but I’m grateful for all of the humanity that she carries in her badness. It feels more natural to me cause I don’t tend to play bad.
There’s a lot of physicality to this role. What kind of training did you have to do for that?
Oh, so much. And I love that stuff. It calms my anxiety about my character when I can channel my discovery of her into physical things. I’m a dancer and a lifelong athlete, and it helps me. So we did a lot of boxing.
We worked with an incredible Filipino knife expert who helped me with all the weaponry I use, the knifework in particular. I had this dummy knife that I was playing with constantly in my apartment in Toronto that I rented. It was this glass apartment that’s all windows. I kept thinking some of these neighbours are probably calling the police, going, “There’s a crazy woman who is constantly twirling a knife in her hand while she’s watching Gilmore Girls all night.” [laughs]
The other aspect is a spirituality centring on the tarot cards she references. Did you do any research into that part of the character?
For sure. I’m also a bit of a bruja myself. I love that element of womanhood. Particularly my Latinidad. All of that mysticism feels very honest to me. It was maybe the one entry point that I felt, for a character who is enacting all of this revenge for her mother. It feels so connected to the earth, a prayer to her. The fact that we got to see her as much in her prayer mode as in the performance of the violence was just such a gift and such good writing.
Did you meditate on Rebecca’s quest to find peace through violence in your process of discovery?
Absolutely. I saw it as her last resort. We know that she’s been working on this for 10 years. So it was the first time I thought about a character for so long before [we meet her]. I think she had to have had so much time in which she hoped someone would come and do right by her and bring justice to her family and bring justice to the people she knows have been affected. She never saw anything get done. It was the frustration and the sickening of [how] no one was doing anything that led her to feel as if this was the only way to get any results and to make the world a better place.
Do you think Rebecca finds her peace?
For Jeanine, it’s helpful to think about the show [in terms of] “How is Rebecca in service of Alex Cross?” And in relation to Alex Cross, I think she has [found peace.] Her ultimate beautiful gift to the show was what she gives him, what she inspired in him, and what she reinstills in him, or helps him reconnect to. The fact that she, in those final moments of the season, feels like he’s heard her and he’s going to carry the torch. That is a version of peace for her. But from the moment we meet this character, she’s already a dead man walking. A good, happy, and joyful life is long gone as an option for her.
Prime Video’s Cross Season 2 premieres on February 11 with a three-episode event. New episodes will drop weekly until March 18.
