Sydney Chandler describes experience on the Alien: Earth TV series as ‘a joy’
By Lynn Rusk, PA
Sydney Chandler has described her first experience of leading a cast in the new sci-fi drama Alien: Earth as a “joy”.
The 29-year-old American actress plays Wendy, a humanoid robot with human consciousness, in Emmy-winning producer Noah Hawley’s new series based on the acclaimed franchise.
The Alien franchise began with Sir Ridley Scott’s 1979 film starring Sigourney Weaver as warrant officer Ellen Ripley, who takes on an extra-terrestrial lifeform called the Xenomorph.
The new eight-episode series sees Wendy and a group of tactical soldiers make a discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat.
Chandler, who starred in Olivia Wilde’s psychological thriller Don’t Worry Darling and Danny Boyle’s miniseries Pistol, about the Sex Pistols, said she was lucky to have such a supportive cast for her first lead role.
“I felt like every day I was showing up to an incredible acting class,” Chandler told the PA news agency.
“I’m new to this game, and so it was just a joy to be able to work with such a supportive and such a giving cast who were there to play.”
Speaking of her character, she said: “There’s so many layers to her and she’s just a juicy character to jump into.
“I did as much prep as you can for a character, there’s no research you could do.
“I really found my character once I started working off everybody.”
Alien: Earth is set in the year 2120, when the Earth is governed by five corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic and Threshold.
In this corporate era, cyborgs and synthetics, which are humanoid robots with artificial intelligence, exist alongside humans, but the world is changed when the founder of the Prodigy corporation unlocks a technological advance: hybrids (humanoid robots infused with human consciousness).
Wendy, the first hybrid prototype, marks a new advance in the race for immortality and after Weyland-Yutani’s spaceship collides into Prodigy City, Wendy and the other hybrids encounter new and terrifying life forms.
The cast includes Deadwood actor Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh, Black Mirror star Alex Lawther as Hermit, Mary And George’s Samuel Blenkin as Boy Kavalier, Guerrilla actor Babou Ceesay as Morrow and Bottom star Adrian Edmondson as Atom Eins.
Blenkin said the filming experience was made a lot easier due to Hawley’s practical approach to special effects.
“We were lucky on this show because we’re not doing much acting with tennis balls or anything like that that you do in a show where there’s a lot of CGI,” the 29-year-old actor explained.
“Noah was really intent upon everything being practical.
“There’s no acting required when Cameron, the vegan New Zealander, is wearing a Xenomorph suit and is leering over you and drooling, and it’s animatronic and it’s real.
“It was just a joy. We turn into kids on those sets.”
Hawley, who is best known for creating the Fargo TV series, said the “imperfections of reality are scarier than the sort of bloodlessness of computer-generated images”.
“All I’m trying to do is create the same feelings that you had when you watched Ridley’s film or James Cameron’s film,” the 57-year-old writer and director explained.
“Some of that we’re able to achieve in new ways, but some of it is literally going back to the original cinema of optical illusions.”
Alien: Earth will launch on Disney+ on August 13th.