'Roswell, New Mexico' actor Carina Adly Mackenzie on Liz being a scientist: 'The representation is important'
One of the things the 'Roswell' reboot has not shied away from is showing Liz Ortecho as the biomedical researcher and scientist that she is. In the Season 2 premiere of 'Roswell, New Mexico', Liz gives an impassioned speech about her career, saying that she has been waiting a long time for someone in power to believe in her. Now, Liz wants to put her knowledge to practice as she tries to bring Max Evans back to life.
Liz's career as a scientist has been an intriguing story arc, right from Season 1 when she returned to Roswell after funding for her work was cut by the government. MEA Worldwide (MEAWW) spoke to showrunner Carina Adly Mackenzie on portraying Liz as a scientist and how important it was to viewers.
Mackenzie says, "We'll actually go back and have some flashbacks to some of the struggles that Liz has faced as a scientist — not just as a woman, but [also] as a woman of color."
Mackenzie speaks about how for girls of color, a career as a scientist is not frequently seen as an option. She says, "[There] is a beautiful speech that she has, where she says, 'I wasn't invited to dream things like this as a kid. This wasn't something that was an opportunity for me.'"
Mackenzie says her career as a scientist is really important to Liz. She says, "What she's going to start to face very quickly this season is the idea that she is doing something extraordinary in a rundown lab that she can never tell anyone about. And that becomes very frustrating to her because she thinks that, you know what, her life would have been so different had she had a role model, had she had people to make her believe that that's what she could do."
Mackenzie continues, "And here she is hiding and pretending to be a waitress all day, and that's really hard on her because it is important to her to be a woman in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine) and not just to us as a show, but to live as a character. The representation is important."
'Roswell, New Mexico' airs on The CW on Monday nights at 9/8c.