Former rancher Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) ushers in a whole new cast of characters to Taylor Sheridan’s “Yellowstone” universe in Paramount’s “Marshals.” On his team is Andrea Cruz (Ash Santos), a tenacious fighter originally from the Bronx in New York, who is well out of her comfort zone working in the sprawling landscape of Montana. If Cruz looks familiar, that’s because the actor who plays her has been part of one of the best FX shows of the last decade.
Some audiences might recognize Ash Santos better as Emily in “American Horror Story: Apocalypse.” She’s one of few survivors welcomed into a bunker when the world is ravaged by nuclear war. This is because a shady group known as the Cooperative have found out that she might have DNA relating to Satan. Yes, she’s supposedly related to the devil himself. Santos shares a lot of her screen time with Emily’s love interest, Timothy (Kyle Allen), and later gives birth to the second Anti-Christ.
Thankfully, there’s no satanic births in the “Yellowstone” spinoff — although there’s still time for “Marshals” Season 2 to serve up a plot twist. Aside from that, Santos appears as dancer Coco in another Paramount series, “Mayor of Kingstown,” and she also played paramedic Nia Washington in Netflix’s short-lived medical drama, “Pulse.”
Ash Santos grew up around law enforcement, and her father arrested Harvey Weinstein
It’s fitting that Ash Santos landed the role of Andrea Cruz, since she’s very familiar with the world of law enforcement. Her father was a special victims unit detective, and she told 1883 Magazine that he was one of the men who arrested producer Harvey Weinstein in 2018.
The star said, “my father was a special victims unit detective and famously arrested Harvey Weinstein … My father was incredibly good at interrogations and that, oddly enough, is also Andrea’s most valued skill set for the team … it really feels like [Spencer Hudnut] wrote that role for me.”
Santos added that her father’s job benefited her when she joined “Marshals” because she had “so much I could pull from my own life” for her performance. The star also joked that she grew up being interrogated by her father, and drew on those experiences whenever she had to grill someone on camera.
She was also able to bring her own kids to set while filming, and called it a “dream playground” for them, since they got to see plenty of action. She added: “They were on set one day when we had a car crash scene and they actually held production for about 10 minutes while my kids were coming up with my mum so they could watch it.”
