Beyond the Gates‘ Eva Thomas isn’t one to back down from a challenge, whether she’s fighting to be loved, to be trusted, or just to be valued as a human being. Despite being the secret love child of a doctor whose wealthy family refuses to accept her, Eva doesn’t allow her past to define her, and she believes the future is hers to shape.

“She’s so complex and layered,” actress Ambyr Michelle tells TVLine of her fan-favorite character. “A lot of the fans are relating to her with the trauma they’ve been through, the healing process they’re going through. I’m just a grateful little butterfly, to be honest, for everyone to be supporting us like this.”

Michelle brings the character of Eva to life with honesty, tenacity and heart, making her the obvious choice for TVLine to name as our Daytime Star to Watch, part of our inaugural Women to Watch awards series, recognizing women doing exciting, inspiring and industry-shaping work in television.

“When you do a new soap opera, which hasn’t been done in [25 years], you don’t know how people are going to receive it, especially being African-American predominately,” Michelle says. But Beyond the Gates‘ universal themes of family and belonging have also enabled it to cultivate “a diverse audience that’s coming together and talking about the show, which is what we all wanted. No matter Black, white, Asian, Indian — it doesn’t matter. Everyone is talking about the show and relating to the characters, bypassing race.”

Whether Eva is sparring with her half-sister, scheming with her mother, or building bridges with her biological father, Michelle embraces every color of her character’s rainbow, consistently igniting the screen with her fiery, undeniable presence. Rather than portraying Eva as a victim, Michelle is cultivating something special — an aspirational, unstoppable force of nature we plan to watch for years to come.

Whether she’s playing a post-apocalyptic mother-to-be or a winged warrior screaming through the skies, Isabela Merced knows one thing to be true: “A woman with a plan is so unstoppable.”

Indeed, the last several months have found Merced playing two fictional forces of nature: The Last of Us‘ Dina, the quietly fierce girlfriend of Bella Ramsey’s Ellie, and the Superman film’s Hawkgirl, an airborne member of DC’s Justice Gang who’ll next show up on the small screen in Peacemaker Season 2.

All of this makes Merced a perfect choice for TVLine to name as one of our inaugural Women to Watch. Our new awards series recognizes women doing exciting, inspiring and industry-shaping work in television. The honorees are selected by the TVLine staff; Merced is this year’s Drama Star to Watch.

Later this week, we’ll reveal the awardees in Comedy Star to Watch, Daytime Star to Watch, Reality Star to Watch and Showrunner to Watch. Full video interviews will be posted here on TVLine.com, with bonus content rolling out on our social channels (Instagram, TikTok and YouTube).

In the video at the top of this post, Merced chats with TVLine editor Claire Franken. Their freewheeling conversations includes the do’s and don’ts of harness work, Merced’s take on working with heavy hitters like Pedro Pascal and Nathan Fillion and her thoughts about where Ellie and Dina might be heading in The Last of Us Season 3.