“Cross” is back … and Mason is raging

When viewers met Jeanine Mason, she was a teen dancer, quick and joyful.
Now she’s a vigilante suspect (fictionally), filled with rage. That requires some acting.
“There’s a lot of anger, there’s a lot of fear” in the character, Mason (shown here) told the Television Critics Association. “We wanted you to be scared of her, certainly, but … you see how much she’s carrying.”
That’s for the second season of “Cross,” which starts with three episodes Wednesday (Feb. 11) on Amazon Prime, then has five weekly episodes.
At the core is Durand (Matthew Lillard), a cruel billionaire with agriculture schemes. When he receives a grisly package, the case goes to Alex Cross.
“Cross is the pinnacle of the type of characters I’ve gotten to play,” said Aldis Hodge, who stars.
A central figure in James Patterson novels and three movies (two with Morgan Freeman, one with Tyler Perry), Cross is a brilliant police detective. He’s a Black man with a complicated personal life; he’s also deeply caring.
He reflects, Hodge said, “aspects of what I believe us to be as a people, as a culture, as a collective, that are not always represented out there.”
The first season won NAACP Image Awards for best drama series and for Ben Watkins’ script, plus nominations for Hodge, co-star Isaiah Mustafa and three more.
For the second season, “I really leaned into a storyline about vigilantism,” Watkins said, “’cause I wanted to live vicariously through someone who decides to flip the tables …. I wanted to force myself and also the audience to ask the question:, ‘How far is too far?'”
There are plenty of reasons for someone to rage at Durand’s treatment of Latinos. (“We shot this over a year ago,” Watkins said. “At the time, we didn’t know it was going to feel so relevant.”)
And there are key suspects, including Donnie (Wes Chatham) and Luz. That’s Mason’s role, a huge jump from her start.
Growing up in Miami, she began studying ballet and flamenco at age 3, then added all the other dance forms. At 18, she did “So You Think You Can Dance,” becoming its fifth (and youngest) winner.
But she had also been studying acting. After winning, she started with light roles (including “Bunheads,” which included dancing), then starred in the three-season run of “Roswell, New Mexico” (shown here).
Still, “Cross” pushes her to a new level. “Jeanine comes in for (an audition) and she’s up against heavyweights,” Watkins said. “But as soon as she did her performance … we knew she was the person.”
There were still skills and subtleties to work on, Mason said.
“I had about a thousand coaches for all the abilities this woman has, like the knives. And I was like, ‘Hey, Ben, what about a dialect coach to help me stop doing my Cuban thing and start doing this Mexican thing?'”
She got that, too. A Cuban-American became a Mexican-American; a joyful dancer morphed into an angry vigilante suspect.