Majandra Delfino wants out of ‘Roswell’

Thanks to JoeyNob for posting this on the message board

By MICHAEL ZITZ
The Free Lance-Star
Date published: Thu, 02/14/2002

She isn’t Maria.

Majandra Delfino dearly wants you to know that.

No, she’s nothing like the air-headed teen character on “Roswell,” the UPN show about adolescent aliens.

She doesn’t even like the show that’s landed her on the cover of Seventeen and gotten her a sexy layout in FHM men’s entertainment magazine. As a matter of fact, she despises the TV program that’s brought her fame.

The 20-year-old Delfino thinks of herself not as an actress, but a musician–and she wants to go back to music as soon as possible.

The problem is that just about everyone else thinks of her as a TV actress.

“Which makes me laugh,” she said in a telephone interview with The Free Lance-Star from Los Angeles. “I’ve never taken an acting lesson or been in a play.”

Delfino, the daughter of Venezuelan and Cuban-American parents, was born in Caracas, began playing piano
at 5, and at 11 began to sing and perform.

She wants to go back to that and sees no redeeming social value in being on “Roswell”–not even as a vehicle to launch her music career.

“It could have been a vehicle, but if anything, I see it as kind of like a hindrance,” Delfino said. “People think I’m my character. Unfortunately, I play this really peppy, ditzy character,” she said.

Her music couldn’t be less peppy.

She’s self-released a debut six-song EP titled “The Sicks” on her own Dripfeed Records label. The music, which is dark, melodic electronica, is available through majandra.com on the Web.

The darkness reflected in “The Sicks” comes from personal experience, she said. The EP and the song “Bruises” deals with struggling to handle emotional wounds.

“This is definitely not an album where we looked at it and thought, ‘What would make me look cool? Let’s go dark,'” Delfino said.

It’s the real Majandra, she said.

She wants to go on tour to promote “The Sicks” but “Roswell” is holding her back, she said.

She’s hoping the show, which has low ratings, is dropped by UPN.

“If ‘Roswell’ gets canceled, I’ll definitely go out on tour,” Delfino said. “It’s like the lowest-rated show on TV. It’s kind of stifling to be working every day and have just about one person watch it.”

Cancellation of the TV show is now on hold until Feb. 26. The show airs on Tuesday nights at 9 following “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

Being allowed to go on tour would be “a huge relief,” Majandra said.

“I don’t even care if no one comes to the shows. I just don’t want anyone to come and yell, ‘Maria!’ If they do, they’ll be quietly escorted out by security,” she said with a chuckle.

She doesn’t plan to do television again in the foreseeable future.

“I took ‘Roswell’ because I was interested in seeing how it would be,” Delfino said. “I saw, so that’s all I needed.”

“I definitely find movies more interesting,” she said.

Her film credits include: “Zeus and Roxanne” (1997), “The Secret Life of Girls” (1999), “I Know What You Screamed Last Summer” (1999) and “Traffic” (2001).

She read for Mena Suvari’s part as the seductive cheerleader in “American Beauty,” but didn’t get the role–perhaps in part because she decided to cut her hair short before the reading, and perhaps in part because of a faux pas.

“I didn’t really mind when they said the character had an affair with an older man,” Delfino said. “But when they said ‘Kevin Spacey,’ I made a face like that wouldn’t have been my pick.”