Why Christine From Y: The Last Man Looks So Familiar
FX's "Y: The Last Man" is the long-awaited television adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra's Vertigo comic book series that ran from 2002 to 2008. The show, which debuted in mid-September, is set in a world where every person and animal with a Y chromosome suddenly dies except for an underachieving college student, Yorick Brown (Ben Schnetzer), and his capuchin monkey pal, Ampersand. As you'd expect from that premise, it boasts a nearly all-female cast full of performers you've seen before.
While the TV adaptation is a mostly faithful adaptation of the original story, "Y: The Last Man" does make several updates for 2021, including adding some new characters not seen in the comics. Per Slate, one of those new additions is Christine Flores, an advisor to President Jennifer Brown (Diane Lane). Christine is played by actress Jess Salgueiro, an up-and-coming performer who's been racking up screen credits since 2009 (via IMDb). She's been a mainstay in the Canadian entertainment industry, appearing in sitcoms like "Workin' Moms," "Kim's Convenience," and "Letterkenny." American viewers probably know her best from her multiple appearances on superhero and sci-fi shows, which puts her role on "Y: The Last Man" more firmly in her wheelhouse.
Here's where you may have seen Salgueiro before.
Jess Salgueiro plays Officer Isabel on Tiny Pretty Things
Before "Y: The Last Man," Jess Salgueiro's most recent role is Officer Isabel Cruz on the Netflix show "Tiny Pretty Things," a drama about a scandalous Chicago-area ballet school. Officer Isabel is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who gets called in to investigate the mysterious fall that left Cassie (Anna Maiche) in a coma. The role is a bit of a departure for Salgueiro because it sees her taking on a character living in a more grounded world.
Salgueiro was filming "Tiny Pretty Things" at the same time she was filming the Netflix superhero show "Jupiter's Legacy." As she told Geek Hard (via YouTube) in a May 2021 interview, this was an ideal work situation because it allowed her to play a wider range of emotions and use bits of one character to inform another. She explained, "Truly, those are my favorite times of work when I have a couple of things going at the same time. I love how each can kind of play on the other. It's this weird thing, but it fuels me. I need some comedy to be able to go to the dark places, and sometimes I need the dark places to ground the comedy. So, for me, I thrive when I get to do different genres at the same time."
Jess Salgueiro had a recurring role on the first and only season of Jupiter's Legacy
"Y: The Last Man" isn't Jess Salgueiro's first time playing a character in a television adaptation of a comic book series. Previously, she was a main cast member on the Netflix show "Jupiter's Legacy," based on the Image comics by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely. The show follows a team of young superheroes who try to live up to the last generation's legacy while grappling with the fact that the world is a much different place. Salgueiro plays Shockwave, a member of a team of supervillains who shoots electricity through her hands.
As she told Collider in 2019, what appealed to her about "Jupiter's Legacy" was that while Hollywood keeps cranking out superhero movies and TV shows, "Jupiter's Legacy" provides a different take on the genre. Salgueiro shared, "What's interesting about 'The Boys' and about 'Jupiter's Legacy' is that it kind of turns it on its head a little bit, where you see that these people have fallibilities. And they're not necessarily to be put up on this pedestal all the time, as like the moral compass of our culture, or people who only have pure intentions. They're humanized, and I think that's what the superhero genre needed."
Jess Salgueiro joined The Expanse in Season 4 as Chandra Wei
Jess Salgueiro was one of the big additions to the fourth season of the sci-fi series "The Expanse." The show is adapted from the James S. A. Corey book series of the same name. "The Expanse" is set in the future when Earth has colonized the solar system, and different planetary factions fight for control. Salgueiro played Chandra Wei, a security officer for Royal Charter Energy, one of the groups trying to colonize Ilus IV, aka "New Terra." Wei appears in the books, but "The Expanse" TV series makes an effort to flesh her character out (via TV Guide).
Speaking with Collider in 2019, Salgueiro talked about the challenges of joining an established show in the middle of its run. "It was intimidating," she explained, "It was a pretty quick turnaround. I'd been doing comedy all summer, got cast on the show pretty quick, had wrapped some web series, and literally four days [later], I'm on this crazy set with like a hundred background [actors] behind me, wielding a weapon. I'm like, 'What is happening? Do I remember how to do this?'"
But once she started working, Salgueiro found the set to be a supportive atmosphere, which made the process easier. She appeared in nine of the 10 episodes in Season 4.