‘Cross’ Star Jeanine Mason Booked Season 2 Role With That Chilling Opening Monologue

Note: This story contains spoilers from “Cross” Season 2, Episodes 1-3.

“Cross” newcomer Jeanine Mason said she booked her role as Luz in Season 2 with that bloody and chilling opening monologue in Episode 1.

“That was my first scene, and I was like, ‘Hell yeah.'” Mason told TheWrap of her audition for the Luz. “And they let me do the whole thing.”

Mason’s audition scene is also the first scene that introduces viewers to the no-nonsense, knife-wielding vigilante. The season opens by taking viewers to his Epstein-like island where wealthy men are sexually abusing trafficked women. One in particular is named Richard Helvig, whom Luz has a personal vendetta against.

“I am the daughter of Dr. Gabriela Alejandra Porras — healer, teacher and protector of the poor, the forgotten and the maltreated. Her blood gives me strength,” Luz tells Richard in Spanish, switching back to English just as swiftly as she pulls a knife to his throat.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks in fear.

“Are you asking because you don’t know what you’ve done to deserve this? Or because you’ve committed so many deplorable, evil acts over the course of your despicable life that you can’t figure out which ghost has come back to haunt you? Do you want to hate, Richie? They say I have her eyes,” Luz says as she tells Richard the story of how she found her mother’s lifeless body as a child.

“It was storytime when I found her. I tried to wake her, but she was too tired. And I thought about going back to my bed, but my favorite part of every day was storytime,” Luz explains with tears running down her face. “So I decided, instead of her reading to me, I would read to her. I climbed up in bed and I laid down next to my dead mother.”

Richard tries to apologize, but his empty words can’t fill her deep-rooted pain.

“You have sinned enough, you vile, limp-dick waste of flesh and bone,” Luz says. “We both know that wasn’t a mistake, and you didn’t regret it and until now.”

And just like that, she slices his neck, knocking off the latest kill from her checklist.

Mason recalls how she went all out performing the scene during the audition.

“It was one of those auditions where I just found myself having climbed on poor [reader] Marcus and I had my arms around him, and I was doing the pretend knife work,” Mason explained. “This sweet man — it was so funny too. I had makeup on, and I am fair-skinned. I’m like, rubbing my face up on this sweet actor. And at one point, I looked up and holding his face, and he’s got foundation on half his face, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ I sent him flowers. I was like, ‘Thanks for helping me get that gig!'”

“Cross” marks the first time Mason got to take a walk on the antihero side of TV and film. She said it wasn’t until her role as Horizon executive Karina Silva in Prime Video’s “Upload” that she got to quench her taste for playing the bad guy.

“[I] had came off a protagonist chunk of my career with ‘Roswell, New Mexico,’ and just a lot of more protagonist-y vibes, or certainly decent people. And then I got to do this bit of a villainous moment on ‘Upload.’ And I was like, ‘Man, it’d just be so fun to lean into this.’ When this came around, I honestly immediately felt like somebody who knows me would probably be like, ‘This is not in her wheelhouse,’ but not knowing Ben [Watkins,] [who] kind of really, let me just sort of be free in the audition.”

As “Cross” did in Season 1, the new episodes tackle social commentary on real-life issues, including labor and sex trafficking, labor abuse and more. However, it also highlights the vibrant Latino culture and the societal challenges the Latino community faces.

“I love how [‘Cross’] found this balance of being truly a fun popcorn show, where it’s the adventure —  it’s scratching that itch — but it is also rooted in current time, this is a show about a Black man who’s a detective in D.C.,” Mason said. “I just remember feeling so relieved that Ben was so authentically jazzed about having a Latina on the show and digging into our culture and bringing in all of our mythology and all of our magic. And he’s like a kid at a candy store, he was like, ‘We’re going to use all this.’ It’s just good vibes, man. It’s so fun.”

“Cross” Season 2 releases new episodes Wednesdays on Prime Video.

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