Trivia
-Executive producer Jonathan Frakes appears on-screen near the end of the first episode. He is the man on stage that announces the crash of the UFO. He appears twice more as himself, once as a guest speaker in the season one episode “The Convention,” and another in the season three episode “Secrets and Lies” where he holds a casting audition for Max on the show “Enterprise” (2001).
-Fearing cancellation during the show’s first season, fans of Roswell sent tiny bottles of Tabasco sauce (the choice condiment of the show’s aliens) to the WB network as part of a campaign to save the show. Roswell was subsequently moved to a new night and time and renewed for a second season.
-Heath Ledger auditioned for the role of Max Evans.
-Katherine Heigl tested for all three female leads before landing the part of Isabel Evans. Before winning the role of Maria DeLuca, Majandra Delfino originally auditioned for the part of Liz, which eventually went to Shiri Appleby who, like Heigl, tested for all three female lead roles, winning the lead of Liz Parker after several callbacks.
-The newspaper clippings shown at the beginning of the show’s credits are actual headlines from the infamous Roswell “UFO Crash” in July of 1947.
-The mountain where alien-children came from (and frequently go back to) is the same as the mountain Captain Kirk climbs in an episode of “Star Trek” (1966); it was also used in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991), as the mountain to which Bill & Ted are brought to be killed by the evil robots and in Fastlane (2002) where Van and Deq go to meet with an arms dealer (and their car is shot with a rocket launcher).
-During the opening credits of the show, the names of the stars come up on the screen, first in “alien writing,” and then morph into English.
-In the third season episode “Secrets and Lies,” after doing terribly on an audition for “Enterprise” (2001), Max’s agent tells him that “There’s still ‘Buffy’,” a reference to Jason Behr’s guest appearance as Ford in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Lie to Me (#2.7)” (1997). Also, Julie Benz, Who plays Agent Tapolski, plays Darla on Buffy.
-The pilot episode was the highest-testing episode 20th Century Fox had ever done.
-Though the name given to the alien Nasedo is purported on the show to be an Indian word for “visitor,” it was actually made up by show co-executive producer and writer Thania St. John by scrambling the letters of the town of Sedona, Arizona.
-Majandra Delfino was nicknamed Majandra because her sister couldn’t pronounce her real name, “Maria Alejandra”.
-Nick Wechsler auditioned for 4 different roles.
-They didn’t even use real Tabasco sauce. Instead, it was V8 Berry Splash. They tried to use real Tabasco sauce, but their eyes kept watering and they kept running for more water after each take.
-In the final episode of season one, Destiny, we see homing beacons around earth lighting up and begin beeping, showing the way to earth for anyone in outer space. A sinister looking character sitting in a dark car looks at one of the beacons in his palm and says ‘It has begun’ into his cellphone. The actor is, in fact, Howie from the Backstreet Boys.
-Brendan ‘always had his eye on the role of Michael’ – even when Roswell’s producers made him audition for the lead of Max. Brendan auditioned with his friend Carly Pope who didn’t make it into Roswell, however ended up with the lead role of Sam on another teen show – Popular.
-Katherine auditioned for all three lead female roles before winning the part of Isabel.
