Crash landing onto Disney+ this August, the highly anticipated arrival of Alien: Earth is set to cause waves within the sci-fi genre! Not only is it the first Alien TV show in the timeline, but it’s set just before the iconic events of Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking initial outing in 1979. When the USCSS Maginot, a mysterious deep-space research vessel containing horrific specimens, slams into Earth, the powers that rule compete to capture the runaways as fast as possible, and by any means necessary. With an ambitious pilot episode, backed by a unique vision from show creator Noah Hawley (Fargo) and an incredible cast, Alien: Earth is not to be missed! STARBURST caught up with Babou Ceesay (Morrow) and Samuel Blenkin (Boy Kavalier) to dig into the creative process and the next generation of Alien…
STARBURST: Watching an Alien movie for the first time is a core memory for many, and one of the exciting prospects about Alien: Earth is that a newcomer to this world could start their journey into the timeline with this show, before watching Alien. Can you talk about what you would love for Alien: Earth to do for someone who chooses the show as a starting point?
Babou Ceesay: TV series have become a whole thing of their own, and for some people, that’s the path. They want to have eight hours to binge. Watching movies is fun, and I love movies. So I think there’s going to be a whole group of people who come to Alien: Earth as their first encounter, and I love the idea that then leads them back to the films, back to Alien, Aliens, and so on. It’s really something. I think we will capture a new audience, I really believe that. Grow the ranks.
Listed as a producer, director, and writer, Noah Hawley is crucially involved with the show. Could you both elaborate on what that amazing level of involvement has brought to the creative process?
Babou: Singular vision, it’s someone who has the whole and no one knows where he wants to end things. I think with a lot of series, sometimes they seem to avoid that very difficult question. It’s like “When we start, we’ve got momentum, where are we going?” Noah kind of knows where he is going. Of course, he has all of these titles, but he has also built an incredible team around him, across the board. In every department, everybody wanted to be there, and they’re working to the best of their ability.
Samuel Blenkin: It also gives us a sense of freedom when we walk onto set, because at its worst, sometimes when you do those TV jobs where maybe you’re taking material that isn’t to an incredibly high standard, our job as actors is to kind of make bad dialogue sound kind of good. That is not the case on this show. This is a show where you trust the showrunner so implicitly that he is going to take care of his side of the bargain. What we get to do is come on and just be as playful and as free as possible. It’s a joy to work in that kind of environment, when people are taking risks. We are not just trying to make it passable; everyone is a fan on this show. Noah is a fan of all the creatives, the costume designers, the actors. So that feeling of like we’re all fans of each other means that everyone pushes for the next level. The craftsmanship is on display throughout the series.
Noah also brought in the idea of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan and applied it the main group of synthetic hybrids that we see in Alien: Earth. Samuel, could you tell us about that idea, and how Boy Kavalier feels about the classic story himself?
Samuel: I found it really compelling, and I think it’s obviously a very clear connection between a character who, you know, might be a parallel there to today to somebody who has completely misread the story of Peter Pan, and has clearly taking it as his inspiration… If he really took a look at that book, you’d see there are dark undertones there. For me, the message of that book is maybe in some ways you have to grow up. Unfortunately, life means that in order for us to be moral human beings, who are responsible for each other and who are capable of loving each other, we actually have to become adults. I think that is the reality of life, and I just find it quite funny and ironic that Boy is this character who has completely misread that story, and just went “I kind of like this, maybe this can be a theme that I can play with!” and that’s the kind of character that he is. Things are very light in his hands, and his attention span is very short. Yeah, the hybrids and human immortality that was interesting for a bit, but I think actually, by the time we see him in the story, yeah, he is interested, but he might be getting a bit bored, he is kind of, maybe looking for the next thing to crash land on earth.
ALIEN: EARTH premieres Wednesday, August 13th, with the first two episodes available to stream on Disney+ in the UK. A new episode of the 8-episode season will premiere every Wednesday on Disney+.
