Alien Earth: An Empire Podcast Special ft. Noah Hawley, Timothy Olyphant & Sydney Chandler

0:14Chris Hewitt:Hello Pod, I'm Chris Hewitt and welcome to an Empire podcast special dedicated to Alien Earth, the brand new Disney Plus show that dropped its first two episodes today, Wednesday, August 13th, in case you're wondering what the days do. date was. Alien Earth is technically a prequel to Ridley Scott's classic Alien, of course, but it is very much expanding and evolving the ideas and themes that Ridders started playing with nearly 50 years ago, and which were picked up, of course, by the likes of James Cameron, David Fincher, Jean-Pierre Chouinay, and more across the decades, including Ridley himself.

0:54Chris Hewitt:As you can tell from the title, this eight-part first season, the first they're hoping of several, I believe, somehow brings our old pal the Cenomorph to Earth a couple of years before the events of Alien, when a ship crash lands in the middle of a city. A ship carrying a terrifying cargo. One that some of the richest and most powerful people on the planet are very keen to get their hands on. For totally selfless reasons, of course. so how does this all play out? how does this take place before Alien? what the hell is going on? well you're going to have to watch to find out of course but the answer is in ingenious ways because yes I know what you're thinking an Alien TV show?

1:39Chris Hewitt:come on give me a break but Alien Earth is absolutely fantastic we gave it 5 stars in our official Empire review and much deserved they are too this is a hugely ambitious series and or comparisons are much deserved and is playing with all kinds of weighty themes about humanity, life beyond humanity, our place in the cosmos, the ethics of experimentation, and much, much more. Whilst also putting the willies right up with some wonderful set pieces to remind you how scary the alien can truly be. Something I think has been lost over the years. Oh, and here's another kicker. The alien may not be the most terrifying new arrival.

2:18Chris Hewitt:So, in short, the show is a belter. But then what did you expect from its creator and showrunner, Noah Hawley, the man behind the excellent Legion and Fargo? He's basically like the Lord of Miller of TV, taking premises that don't seem that promising on paper, but delivering something that's richer and deeper than you expected, and which sits alongside and augments the source material. So right now, this special is comprised of two interviews that I conducted recently with Noah Hawley and two of the show's stars. Timothy Ollivant, who plays the mysterious android Kirsch, complete with a shock of white hair and white eyebrows in an inscrutable manner that means he's very much one to keep an eye on.

3:01Chris Hewitt:And Sidney Chandler, who stars as Wendy, the next stage in Human Evolution, a hybrid with a genetically engineered body that houses the mind of a child. So first I'll be going to hear from Hawley. And while this isn't a spoiler pod, and we don't delve deep into the events of the first two episodes, In fact, I'd seen the first six before doing this interview. We do discuss some of the events that happen and some of the new creatures that Holly is introducing to this world. I call them creepy Hollies. They will haunt your nightmares, basically. So it might be best to listen to these interviews after you've seen the first two episodes, which is why this has gone up today, Wednesday, when those episodes drop on Disney+.

3:46Chris Hewitt:But then if you're not bothered, then just dive on in as we talk in general terms about the show's genesis, the ideas that Hawley wants to explore, and his cast, including, as you're about to hear, seemingly half the cast of Ben Wheatley's Free Fire in the shape of Michael Smiley, Babu Cisse, and Enzo Salenti, all of whom are crew members aboard that crashed ship. But we also talk about the lengths that Sidney Chandler went to get Noah Hawley's attention for the role of Wendy. Either way, whatever you do, this is a fascinating conversation with a brilliant guy. So here it is. Noah Hawley talking about alien earth.

4:23Chris Hewitt:Enjoy. Noah Hawley, welcome to the Emperor Podcast. How are you, sir? I'm fair to Midland. That's good. That's exactly where I am right now. Yeah, it's better than a week ago. Next week, you know, I'm good. Thank you for asking. It's better than The Alternative, is what I have to say. Yes, it's true. Absolutely. Before we get into Alien Earth, can I ask a question? Yes. Are you a fan of Ben Wheatley's Free Fire? I am a fan of that movie, yes. So it's not a coincidence, then, that three of the members of that film's cast are on the match. Which of the three? I know two of them. So Babu, Enzo, and Michael Smiley.

5:00Oh, Enzo's in it also. Right. Okay. Yeah, that wasn't deliberate. I do like that movie. I thought you really liked that movie. I really liked it. Well, I have seen it more than once. Let's just put it that way. Good, good, good. You know, it is a good excuse for a fun time, certainly. But no, that was just coincidence. It certainly, I mean, Babu was the first cast. Okay. And, you know, as a series regular, and then when it came time to populate the ship, But yeah, I think I started with Michael. But it wasn't until after I'd cast them that I realized where I'd seen them all before, which was together.

5:40Chris Hewitt:There you go. Michael is great at sort of conveying that world weariness. Yes. There's a lovely sort of Harry Dean Stanton vibe going on. Yeah, there was a moment where we were just shooting some B-roll and I asked him to tell a bedtime story to Jamie, who plays his hapless engineer's assistant. And if you want a good story, ask an Irishman to tell anything, any story. So he was a delight. So he was still going, he was like 20 minutes into the story. He's still going now, yeah, I think. Can you talk about casting with this? How did you approach it? What were you looking for in terms of putting together this ensemble?

6:24Yeah, I mean, it's kind of instinctual for me. You know, some people have synesthesia, right, where it's like their senses get mixed up and they see colors and they hear, you know, when they hear a sound, they see shapes, etc. You know, I just have a sense of casting where it's almost just the space the actor fills, right, which feels like the character to me. And so certainly I have been surprised in auditions by actors' performances, but a lot of it is a sense of rightness. You know, oh, yeah, this is that person where it's not really a competition. It's just looking for that person who feels right.

7:14And I do also like to incorporate characters who don't speak a lot sometimes. And so now you're looking for someone who can just hold the camera in a specific way.

7:25Chris Hewitt:I think you've described pretty much everyone in this show. They all do hold the camera. But, you know, I mean, it's the challenge here, right, is that, you know, I'm casting, you know, six adults to play children in adult bodies. And, you know, they're all written very specific characters with very different journeys. And, you know, but it is a fascinating process to find those people. And I've had the experience more than once of writing a character and going, I don't know if I'm going to find the actor who can embody this. And then they're the first person that walks in the door. It's very surprising.

8:06Chris Hewitt:I want to get on to Sidney and Wendy in a second. But you've worked with Timothy Olyphant before, of course. Very different character on Fargo. And I think he's deployed in this show in a very different way than we are used to seeing him. Yeah. He can sometimes straddle that line between white hat and black hat very, very nicely. But there's a really sinister side to Kirsch in this. I'm six episodes in and I'm dying to know what this dude's deal is. So was that something that you just saw on him when you were working with him in Fargo? You thought, this is my Kirsch. Yeah, I mean, on some level there's an unknowability.

8:46I mean, you know, in real life he has such charm. He's a moderately handsome guy. Moderately, yeah. And moves through life with a real ease and grace. But he's a rugged guy, and he tends to play a lot of alpha males. Yeah. Right? And he does that on both sides of the moral spectrum. I think we were all introduced to him through some villainous characters that he played early on. and then obviously with Justified, and I too gave him a role as a U.S. Marshal. I mean, he's kind of of a type in a way. But when we were making Fargo season four together back in 2020, I told him that I thought there was something for him in this.

9:33I was already thinking about him as I was thinking about this story. There's something about the synthetic character of of ash right in the original film played by ian home and then of of course um you know bishop in the second film and and and and michael fassbender in in the prometheus films you know where where there's a very there's a a real britishness when you think about the synthetics in the in it you know there's a real britishness to it and and what i liked about Timothy is how American he is in a way. It's just a very different prototype for a synthetic being. And I do think there's something to his just inherent likability, which is the opposite of the inherent dislikeability on some level of the synthetics that are programmed into the film.

10:30So I think that tension is important, especially if you're in a story that's looking at variations on human immortality, whether it's Babu as a sort of cyborg, for lack of a better word, who's a biological person with these mechanical enhancements to an AI, to a hybrid. where we don't make it easy for the audience in terms of good and bad. I think they each carry the full moral spectrum. And I think if I've done my job right, then there are moments throughout the season where you're like, well, I know that I'm supposed to be rooting against Babu, but I feel like he's a man with a code and there's something really likable about him.

11:22And then the same with Tim where it's like, I don't trust this guy, but I also feel like he may be working an agenda in which the means justify the end. The ends justify the means, right? And that maybe in the end it's for the right. So I think, you know, when you do that, you create for the audience an opportunity to engage with the show outside of the show, right? They're thinking about it after they watch it. They're talking about it after they watch it. They got to watch the next one because the unanswered questions aren't just plot questions.

11:55Chris Hewitt:Absolutely. And the baggage that we bring to the show as well in terms of, as you said, the audience's relationship with synthetics in the Alien franchise, Bishop aside, I think, leads you to regard Kirsch with some suspicion. Correct, yeah. Which is going to be interesting to see how that plays out. But in terms of your wider approach to the show, though, you were talking about this eight years ago, your first conversations about the show happened eight years ago. Yeah. Was it Alien Earth, even back then for you? Was this, broadly speaking, what you ended up with, or how did it evolve? Yeah, it was.

12:31I mean, you know, the conversation on some level, the origins of this came in a, you know, sort of request form. You know, we'd like to do Alien. We want to take place on Earth. Great. that's where I'll start. An alien movie is always a trapped in a story, trapped in a spaceship, trapped in a prison. What if it wasn't claustrophobic in that same way? The alien movies always, the pace of them always mimics the life cycle of the creature. So you start with slow dread and horror and build over it into action let's question all of those things you know and those were the early conversations and you know as as a as a story creator you you you want to have some constraints that you know that they're all they're often helpful to know what the boundaries are and and but yeah for me for whatever reason and thinking about this tension in ridley's movie between the monsters of our past and the AI monsters that we've created, and they're both trying to kill us, there was a really fascinating meditation on will humanity survive, or have we just created our own destruction from the greed that forced the corporation to go to the planet that found the creatures, etc.

14:01And so, in thinking about that meditation on humanity and and the next stage of humanity and then obviously you have characters from from the many different movies like when on a writer's character and you know the more sympathetic uh synthetic being etc you know came this idea for the hybrids the the transhuman and then and then because my mind works the way it works the next thought was well what if adult minds are too fixed and so they start with children and we're putting children's minds into adult bodies and maybe that's because I'm raising children and I'm very invested in launching them.

14:39And I look at this adult world that we're all living in and I'm worried for them. And so this idea of just taking a child and saying, you're an adult now, right? And how do you navigate the world? And that's very scary for me. And I thought a good place to start.

14:58Chris Hewitt:It's also a show that says, what's worse than billionaires, trillionaires, which is I guess where we're going. They stopped wearing shoes at that point. They can afford shoes. They can, but they stopped. Why do they stop? They're like, you're all going to look at my feet now. Absolutely. I guess it all goes back to that line in Aliens. You don't see them fucking each other for a goddamn percentage. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's the thing is these creatures are much simpler. There's no ulterior motives. And that's certainly something we explore in the show is the clarity. of these creatures, they're not manipulating each other or lying to each other.

15:40You know, there's a simplicity and honesty to them that I think if you're a child who's wrestling with, well, what even is this thing called human? And if these are the adults, like, why would I want to be that? You know, I think, I think, you know, that question suddenly makes the show ask questions that Alien has never asked before, which is, you know, are the creatures the worst thing in the story? Yeah. You know, and, you know, by introducing these other creatures, I've taken the onus and the pressure off the xenomorph to be what it's always been, you know, and I hope that's the innovation that is really exciting for our fans.

16:30Chris Hewitt:You do this wonderful thing, again, without giving too much away, where you combine the traditional stuff that I think people will want to see, which is a scenomorph running amok and being frankly the sort of deadly killing machine we haven't seen for a while. And then you bring in these wonderful new twists and you brought in these creatures that are terrifying on levels. I can barely begin to articulate. How did you go about creating them? I mean, the eyeball monster is going to live long in people's nightmares. Yeah. Well, some of it is just, you know, once I started laughing, I knew I'd hit a point where that's just the worst thing I've ever thought of.

17:13You know, it's a gift to the world to disturb them on that level. I accept your gift. And I think what was so profoundly disturbing about the xenomorph is that it's four monsters for the price of one. And each stage of its development hits some core genetic revulsion, whether it's the facehugger or the chestburster or the giant predator with two mouths. I mean, it just got worse and worse and worse, right? And so the key is in introducing new creatures is, you know, you have to have that where you're like, wait, how does it breed? I'm out on that, you know. And just looking at my own and other people's just, you know, what bypasses the rational brain, right?

18:12What are those irrational fears that we have? And, you know, you think about kissing bugs in South America who come down in the middle of the night and, you know, they're attracted to your lips. And, you know, I mean, it's just nobody wants any of that, right? So how do we tap into that, you know, and incorporate it into the show?

18:36Chris Hewitt:And then at the other end of the scale, you have Adrian Edmondson, who is a national treasure over here, as I'm sure you know. Rightly so, rightly so. being just the most unspeakable prick, which is a delight to watch. Yeah. Well, I've worked with a lot of comedic actors, and, you know, it seems, you know, they often play a persona that when you meet them in real life, you know, I mean, Adrian, he's just very dignified, you know, he's a lovely man. but he has this, you know, in his, you know, he put himself on tape for it, which I couldn't believe. And, and, you know, there is a, a sort of like disdain, you know, a sort of an effete disdain that he brings to this, to this character, but also a kind of implacability where he's a little unreadable in those ways.

19:33And, you know, I, I told him that, that, that he, that there's a moment in The Young Ones that explains my entire career. It's the moment that he steps into the closet and ends up in Narnia, you know? And I was like, that is everything to me. There's no Legion without that moment. There's no Fargo without that, you know? There's the moment in which the show suddenly did something crazy and you thought a show can do that a story can just suddenly end up in narnia right and the comedy that comes out of that incongruity you know anyway he's he's a delight and that is amazing i am i am uh this is a an

20:17Chris Hewitt:interesting sentence by my bottom guy and uh so you know i would love to see him hit a scene morph with a frying pan that's something you can arrange whether you can go back and reshoot stuff I'll work on it. There's always season two. There's always season two. Anyway, from Narnia to Neverland, I said we would talk about Sydney, who's terrific in the show, and Wendy, who is the center of the show in so many ways. You talked a little bit about where this idea for hybrids came from. Can you talk about where Wendy came from specifically and what Sydney brought to it, apart from how she camped outside your house, essentially?

20:54Yeah. Yeah. No, she, you know, I was filming Fargo 5 while we were casting this and she flew up to Calgary where we were filming and, you know, and got herself the job. You know, she put herself on tape afterwards. But, you know, that passion matters, right? It's, you know, it's Bill Macy in Fargo. He auditioned in LA, then he flew to New York and auditioned for them in New York. Like, he wouldn't take no for an answer, right? It's, you know, on some level it matters. But, you know, the character of Wendy as a 12-year-old in an adult body, right? You think about Newt from James Cameron's film, who was a child with such dignity and poise.

21:43And then you think about Bill Paxton, who is this, like, adolescent, you know, game over man. And, you know, somewhere in there is where the Lost Boys came from. And, you know, but if you go back and reread Peter Pan, it is a dark book, you know. And there's something about Wendy who's basically kidnapped from her home with her younger siblings to come forced to be a mother, you know, to these boys, you know, with Peter watching, always watching, you know, making sure they don't grow up. too much or any of it. And so, you know, that's the problem for her is like they're put into adult bodies, but they're not allowed to be autonomous adults.

22:30And so, you know, I needed an actress who had this power, you know, of identity, this power of just drive of her personality that she was gonna be a noble, brave person um who was going to embody the the best qualities of humans and and then we were going to push her you know by by making the the adults around her you know where she's like well if that's what it means to be an adult i don't know that i that i want that you know you direct

23:06Chris Hewitt:the the opening episode of this and i wonder what it was like for you preparing to follow in the footsteps of Ridley and Jim Cameron and David Fincher and the amazing directors who worked in these movies? Well, you know, I didn't go to school for any of this. I didn't go to school to learn to write novels. I didn't go to school to write screenplays. I learned how to direct on the job. You know, my mother is a writer. Her mother was a writer. My grandmother had an eighth grade education, my mother had a high school diploma, you know, these are all identities that we just have to claim and then earn, you know?

23:45And so, you know, I just, when I came to it, you can't think about the intimidating factors of, you know, of trying to make a Coen Brothers movie with the Coen Brothers watching you, right? And, you know, what was good on some level here is that, you know, it's Ridley and Fincher and Cameron and Jeannette and, you know, it's all these directors. All their styles are different. All their approaches are different. So I'm less constrained. It's more just like, well, what is my aesthetic? What is my cinematic style of bringing it to this? And for me, it was like, well, we're going to make a 70s movie because that will make it feel the most like Ridley's movie.

24:32And, you know, how are we best creating the feelings in the audience that that I want them to feel? That's the only reason I move the camera or use a lens or any of it. So amazing. On that note, I'm glad to go.

24:46Chris Hewitt:Noah Hawley has been an absolute pleasure. Thanks so much indeed. Thank you. And that was Noah Hawley. And now let's go straight into the interview with Timothy Ollivant and Sidney Chandler, who were a lot of fun together. This one starts mid-sentence. As I was explaining to them that I had seen the first six episodes, but not, crucially, the last two episodes. And it all kicks off from that point on. Oh, and again, we try to steer clear of spoilers for anything beyond the first two episodes that are on Disney Plus right now. but again if you want to wait until after you've seen those before you listen to this it's entirely up to you either way it's a fun interview enjoy I cannot wait to see the last two episodes tell me it doesn't fall off a cliff that's cool how about that Chandler yeah that's awesome man this is all these are movie people be careful I'm trying to lure you into a trap yeah the last two episodes fall off a cliff I have not seen the last two episodes oh really no you've seen them I haven't seen them like fully done with all of the effects.

25:48But you've seen more than I've seen. It's pretty awesome. You've read the scripts, right? And you shot them. I read my scenes. I read my scenes. I thought my scenes were strong. But I will tell you that there are people I know and love and respect who have seen episode eight. And now apparently you as well are going to be one of those people. But those people talk about how amazing that episode is. Those people talk about that last episode as being the best episode of the season. I shouldn't do that. I'm overhyping it.

26:22Chris Hewitt:Well, maybe. You know what? I hear it's pretty good. The best episode of television ever? I think we say that. Sydney, can we say that? Let's see if you say that after you watch it. Give us a call. Let me know. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. Well, you know, my hopes are high. My hopes are very, very high indeed. Let's talk about how you guys got involved with this because I guess it was contrasting. I mean, you know, Kirshen and Wendy are studying contrasts anyway, but you had contrasting ways into this. So, Tim, Noah sidled up to you on the set of Fargo. I mentioned this a few years ago. No, no, that's not how it worked.

26:57Okay, that's what he told me. He really did?

27:00Chris Hewitt:Yeah, yeah, yeah. He maybe didn't use the word sidled, but he certainly said he mentioned it to you on Fargo. Our memory today. Okay. Well, I do remember talking to him over the years. and it's not that it's very meaningful to me that we've had conversations over the years since we've met about possible things. And so he may have saddled up to me on the set of Fargo to talk about this, but I recall him talking about something more abstract. Maybe I didn't know it was this. You know, he's a very man-of-you-words kind of guy sometimes. Okay. At least he is with me. I don't think he likes talking to me.