For most of For All Mankind Season 5, Lily Dale (Ruby Cruz) has been unwavering in her advocacy for a Free Mars, even going so far as to encourage Alex to leak the automation plans. When her dad tries to get her to think about the consequences and turn in whoever gave her the information, she still refuses to back down. But as we see in For All Mankind Episode 5 Episode 6, and to an even greater extreme when Lily’s birthday surprise for Alex gets interrupted in Episode 7, actions have consequences. So, what does that mean for Lily’s journey going forward?
During Fangirlish‘s interview, we asked Cruz how things like the riot and the explosion might affect Lily’s unwavering (until now) determination. “We find [Lily] in the time of her life—in her young life—where she’s discovering her voice in activism and…fighting for what she believes in,” Cruz told us, and “she starts off really admirably, [but] not really thinking.” Lily’s “just showing up and doing whatever she can to try to make change.” Then, “as time goes on, she kind of realizes the repercussions more and more.”
So, Lily’s experiencing “this juggle that I think is very relatable and really overwhelming, in terms of [figuring out] how you can show up, what actually makes change,” and what happens “if you start ignoring it and you start getting kind of distracted by other things.” So, Cruz concluded, Lily’s “learning her relationship to advocacy, activism, and finding her voice and learning different ways of how she can show up and, you know, keep herself safe— keep people she loves safe. And yeah, I think it’s—it’s a tough thing to juggle.”
Asked how Lily can possibly be expected to feel safe again with so much danger in so little time, Ruby Cruz pointed out that Lily’s never actually led a safe life to begin with. “I found it really interesting thinking about life on Mars and growing up on Mars,” Cruz said. “It’s like a human experiment…there’s kind of threat[s] around every corner…[and] there’s constantly all of this crazy stuff happening. You can never open a window.” Life on Mars is “hard— it’s tough. And I think, I mean, she doesn’t really know that yet” because “she’s kind of been in it her entire life.”
Ruby Cruz on the fun scene in For All Mankind Season 5 Episode 7 that ends in chaos
As far as Lily’s reaction to the attack on the agro-domes goes, Cruz told us Lily’s “sort of feeling guilt herself for putting people in a certain place at a certain time, even though she knows that that has nothing to do with her and…what she—they—were doing there.” Adding, “it’s hard for her at this point,” Cruz said Lily is “so in the thick of it that she’s just struggling with the guilt.”
It might not seem like it, but the birthday surprise scene in For All Mankind Season 5 Episode 7 is important even before it all goes wrong. Admitting that “it was really fun…to do the actual filming itself,” Cruz told us of the flash mob, “it was shocking that that is what she decided to do.” Still, “in terms of the storyline, I thought it was kind of…it’s so complicated because it’s such a beautiful thing to kind of let loose and have fun while, while everything feels up in flames. And…that is an important thing to upkeep…to find the joy in the little silly things still, while, you know, everything is so crazy…But I think that’s where her guilt comes in, where afterwards, she’s like, ‘what was I thinking, trying to enjoy myself?'”
Again emphasizing that the situation is “complicated,” Cruz called that tension between the guilt and needing to still find joy “relatable, just in terms of like…feeling the world up in flames right now and wondering how to enjoy yourself, but also knowing that that’s a necessary thing to do.”
Watch Ruby Cruz as Lily Dale in For All Mankind Season 5.
Episodes 1-7 are available to stream on Apple TV now, with new episodes releasing weekly
