When Coral Peña auditioned for the Apple TV epic For All Mankind, the future of the show was unknown. In 2022, she told Inverse that at one point, the show floated an “alternate ending” which would have shown Aleida in the distant future. Now, two seasons later, we’re almost there. Peña is in her early 30s in real life, but in the alternate 2012 of For All Mankind Season 5, Aleida is firmly in her early 50s, running ground control from the Titan mission from Mars. “When Aleida went to space before, that was a blip. This is the real deal,” Peña tells Inverse. “The astronauts are like the jocks. But Aleida doesn’t want to be a jock. She wants to be a nerd.”
Though Aleida and Kelly Baldwin (Cynthy Wu) felt more like secondary characters back in Season 3, by Season 4, this next generation became the old guard, which is doubly true in Season 5. That said, for Peña, the crucial difference is that in previous seasons, a lot of the older actors were still a huge part of the show. But now, Peña is the For All Mankind veteran.
