Meet Majandra Delfino

Thanks to Janet for sending this in!

LIFE & ARTS
Meet Majandra Delfino
David Martindale

05/09/2000
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram
FINAL, Page 7
(Copyright 2000)

Except for the most popular guy and girl in class, probably everyone who attends high school feels pangs of alienation.

But in Roswell , the high school misfits really ARE aliens.

“Isn’t that just the best metaphor?” says Majandra Delfino , who co-stars in the TV show often described as The X-Files meets My So-Called Life.

It might seem like an odd combination – to blend suspenseful, action-packed sci-fi with touching, coming-of-age drama – but it works. The show airs at 8 p.m. Mondays on the WB.

“When I read the script, I just loved it,” says Delfino, an off-center 18-year-old who plays Maria, one of the Earth girls who befriends three alien teens. “When I finished reading it, I was like,
‘Whoa, gotta do this.’ I figured if I liked it, other kids my age will, too.”

Delfino originally was asked to audition for the lead female role of Liz, the role Shiri Appleby plays. But Delfino says playing a character that was “very serious and into science and so overanalytical” didn’t appeal to her because she couldn’t relate. “I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be another Felicity.’ ”

Instead, Delfino glommed onto the smaller sidekick role. “I was going, ‘I want to be the girl who’s freaking out over there, the psycho best friend.’ And they made the part bigger for me, which was great.”

Before Roswell , Delfino played Kathleen Quinlan’s daughter in a movie called Zeus & Roxanne and was Tony Danza’s daughter on The Tony Danza Show. She completed her senior year of high school last spring but still lives with her parents, a Venezuelan father and a Cuban-American mother. She was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and was raised in Miami since age 3.

She has enjoyed Roswell so much that she’s hoping the show gets renewed for a second season.

“I’ve been having a really good time,” she says. “I like it so much that, on the weekend, I’ll be just waiting to go to work. It doesn’t even feel like work. I keep calling it school. I keep saying, ‘I’m on
my way to school’ and stuff. Because the word ‘work’ just doesn’t suit it. I hope it runs for at least a little while, because I’d love to keep doing this.”

– David Martindale, Special to the Star-Telegram