Posted in: FX, TV | Tagged: alien: earth

Alien: Earth: Chandler & Lawther on Hawley's Nuanced Franchise Take

Alien: Earth stars Sydney Chandler and Alex Lawther discussed how Noah Hawley's vision serves the franchise, world-building, and much more.

Sydney Chandler (Don't Worry Darling) and Alex Lawther (The End of the F***ing World) have a daunting task as part of the first ensemble cast to lead the Alien franchise on TV in FX's Alien: Earth. Chandler plays an important role as Wendy, the first hybrid whose human consciousness is transferred to a synthetic body. Synthetics have played a major role in the lore since the 1979 original Ridley Scott film Alien, with the late Ian Holm playing Ash. Lawther plays CJ aka "Hermit," a human soldier and medic who crosses paths with the Synthetic along the way. When the mysterious deep space research vessel USCSS Maginot crash-lands on Earth, "Wendy" and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet's greatest threat. The two spoke to Bleeding Cool about how creator Noah Hawley expands on the Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett-created universe in ways that go beyond the seven films, working with multiple directors, and how Wendy fits within the greater paradigm of how humans work with the AI of Synthetics. The following contains minor spoilers.

Alien: Earth Stars Sydney Chandler and Alex Lawther on Noah Hawley's Meticulous Nature and Synthetics

What intrigued you about 'Alien: Earth' and building on the franchise legacy?

Chandler: For me, watching Noah take 'Fargo' and adapt it into something wholly new, but still keeping a hold of the essence and honoring 'Fargo.' I was excited to read these scripts when I saw his name on it, because you can't recreate 'Alien.' You should not try and recreate that film. It's perfection, and so to be able to enter the same universe with the same themes, questions, and texture, while also navigating Noah's imagination, seemed like a fun challenge to take on.

Lawther: I think you answered that rather exquisitely. My feeling was also [the same]. I was curious about 'Alien' and what would happen next in its many chapters, but then knowing that Noah was captaining it was what the thing intriguing.

What's it like working with Noah as a creative and his refreshing take on the franchise?

Lawther: Noah has such an imagination, such a detailed imagination. In a TV world, you end up with many directors, so we had Noah, Ugla [Hauksdóttir], and Dana [Gonzales]. Dana was also the DOP of some of Noah's episodes, so we have many different people at the helm at different times. Of course, as Noah's showrunner, this sort of over-arching captaining. There's a specificity to what he's after. I remember there's one actor, Lloyd [Everitt], who meets a sticky end in the first episode. I think that's okay to say.

Chandler: "Sticky end" [laughs].

Lawther: Noah told him, "Oh, I think you've come to work with a cold today, a head cold." It was just a small detail and not necessarily something that the audience would notice on a first watch, but it gave the actor something specific to play, and I thought that was a good sort of image of Noah's overall imagination, that it's this sort of specificity.

Chandler: Yeah, it's very succinct, because again, you're working, we worked with Dana and then Noah, Ugla, and every director brings something completely new. With [Noah], I appreciated the specificity and two or three words that he'd throw your way. It would unlock the scene in an interesting way. I've never met a mind like Noah's before, and so that's why this show can be what it is. He has the gumption to let his mind run wild, and he's somehow able to keep it grounded at the same time. That's a good word, "gumption."

Sydney, what's the most difficult part about balancing the human side and the synthetic side of Wendy? Did you take any inspiration from past performances from others who played Synthetic characters like Ian Holm, Winona Ryder, or Michael Fassbender?

Chandler: Wendy is a 12-year-old mind put into this synthetic body, so she's the first hybrid. She's the first take at immortality, so she's a blank page, but something that's on the page with her is that she's steadfast in trusting her gut and standing on her own two feet. She's quite rational. Her mind is like a trap in a way. She soaks everything in quite quickly, so I pulled from her to be able to create her in that way of not overthinking it. She accepts the fact that she is who she is in this new body and gets on with it, one foot in front of the other. Then, it's a matter of collaborating with everyone else on set. You do a scene with one actor, your character shifts in one way, and a scene with Alex and something else unlocks for your character. It was a process over the six months. You do your final scene, you're like, "Oh, that's Wendy!" There's my character, I'm ready to go. Ready to start.

Joseph Iberti, Dana Gonzales, and Clayton Krueger join Hawley, Scott, and David W. Zucker as executive producers. Alien: Earth, which also stars Timothy Olyphant, Babou Ceesay, Samuel Kavalier, Essie Davis, Adarsh Gourav, Jonathan Ajayi, Diêm Camille, Lily Newmark, Kit Young, David Rysdahl, and Adrian Edmondson, premieres its first two episodes on August 12th on FX.

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