Over the past 46 years, we’ve gotten nine “Alien” movies, a bunch of short films, an animated web series, plenty of comic books and video games, and even a bootleg high school play. But we’ve never gotten an “Alien” TV show — until now.
The franchise’s newest instalment is in good hands thanks to showrunner Noah Hawley of “Fargo” and “Legion” acclaim. And this time, TV legend Timothy Olyphant (“Deadwood,” “Justified,” “Santa Clarita Diet”) plays the robot!
Chronology-wise, “Alien: Earth” takes place between the happenings of “Alien: Covenant” and “Alien,” and features a world ruled by a collective of five powerful corporations. It’s not just cyborgs and humans mingling; now, there are synthetics embedded with human consciousness, like Wendy (Sydney Chandler, Kyle Chandler’s daughter). She’s the leader of a motley “Peter Pan”-inspired crew of young soldiers who crash-land on Earth where things — as usual — go very, very wrong.
Hawley and his cast assembled recently to share what we can expect from this season of “Alien: Earth,” debuting Tuesday on FX and Disney Plus.
We get new xenomorphs!
Hawley knew going in that he was up against a fandom who had seen several decades’ worth of “Alien” content — how could he keep it fresh? Why, design some new xenomorphs, of course.
“If I introduce new creatures and you don’t know how they reproduce or what they eat, then you feel that dread every time they’re onscreen. Or they’re not visible, but you know they’re out there and you’re not sure what’s going to happen next,” he said.
Plus, Hawley says, “I just tried to gross myself out as much as possible!”
It’s a very perspiration-forward show
“Alien: Earth” was filmed in Thailand over half a year, creating a summer-camp-esque bond between actors — and a decidedly damp cast.
“In terms of performance, I mean, there’s a lot of sweat in this show,” said “Andor” star Alex Lawther, who plays a military medic. “And that’s in part thanks to the makeup department. But I’m sure a good 50 per cent of that has to do with the 90 per cent humidity of Thailand’s climate.” (Keep an eye out for some eye-popping outdoor locations in Krabi for a “jungle on the water” vibe.)
“On this version of Earth, we’re fighting humidity at every moment. So you’ve got these fantastic figures who are cleaning mould off the surface of the facility and that kind of thing,” according to “Black Mirror” star Samuel Blenkin, who portrays the CEO of one of the world-ruling corporations. “There’s this feeling that there’s a rot at the centre of this that’s not really going to go away, which I feel like is a really interesting parallel to the themes of the series. And obviously the humidity in Thailand made that feel very real. There wasn’t much acting required!”
“Alien: Earth” features a more … modern evil corporation
“Alien” fans have long shaken their fists at the nefarious Weyland-Yutani corporation and its lust for power via weaponizing the xenomorphs. Now, however, the corporation has evolved to match our modern world’s more dangerous oligarchs, says Hawley. “I mean, so much of what defines ‘Alien’ and ‘Aliens’ is this idea that there’s this nameless, faceless Weyland-Yutani corporation and these individuals — the space truckers or the soldiers — you know, they’re really at the mercy of this nameless, faceless corporation. In our day and age, our corporations have faces and the faces of these young technocrats, who are celebrity CEO billionaires. So, if I had done the 1970s version of capitalism, it wouldn’t have felt right for the world that we live in today,” Hawley said.
While characters previously might have been subject to the whims of a larger corporation, he said, it really is all about the whims of CEO Boy Kavalier (Blenkin) now, how he feels from moment to moment: “Yeah, let’s send these billion-dollar prototypes to a crash site. That sounds like a good idea, right? So we’re in a different sort of state where the individual is at the mercy now, not just of this nameless, faceless corporation, but these boy geniuses.”
Timothy Olyphant was voted most likely to joke around on set
Blenkin remembers meeting the laconic star for the first time and “knowing that there was going to be a lightness and a playfulness there. I got the sense very quickly from Tim that we were going to have fun,” he said. “And actually, we didn’t know what was going to happen and that’s the most exciting place you can be on set, is when you don’t know where you might end up in a scene. I was grateful every time we cracked up. Every time.”
“If you spend over six months on a sci-fi, horror or anything like that, you have to keep levity on set, otherwise you would go crazy!” Lawther added.
Asked how his android is different from previous models, Olyphant joked “I thought the hair was enough! I thought if we bleach the hair, there you go. He’s his own thing now. We can stop with the comparisons.” (To be fair, David of “Prometheus” and “Alien: Covenant” was also quite the diva about keeping his platinum pristine.)
Hawley says we can look forward to a robot companion that has been reined in quite a bit after previous malfunctions. “We talked a little bit about the programing that goes into a Kirsh and this idea that maybe, not only is he programmed not to harm his boss in any way, but disagreeing with the boss is also discouraged. And getting angry at the boss is verboten. And so potentially if (Kirsh doesn’t) seem to see eye to eye with (someone), maybe just give them a little smile and tell them ‘f—k you’ with your eyes.”
Olyphant, however, found it great fun to play around with the idea that maybe Kirsh starts to develop some, er, thoughts of his own. Does an Ash-style freakout or David-inspired rebellion await us? “We’ll see!”
One actor watched “Alien” as a teen … and was never the same
Blenkin saw it when he was 13 and, he says, now can’t watch horror movies at all: “I’m terrified of horror. It’s much easier to act in it; somehow that’s less scary.”
