Freshly Press’d: Reviving Aliens with Noah Hawley and Timothy Olyphant (ALIEN: EARTH)

Even after almost 50 years, there’s still life in the world of Alien.

Created by Noah Hawley, Alien: Earth follows Wendy, a young human hybrid who is just seeing the world through fresh eyes for the first time. However, her life is quickly upended when the space vessel Maginotcrash-lands on Earth. As a scientific research facility, the ship contained some of Weyland-Butani’s greatest—and most devastating—discoveries. And, after the crash, one such discovery is about to become the planet’s biggest threat.

As one of the truly great names in sci-fi horror, the Alien franchise brings with it massive expectations. As a result, it can be difficult to create something fresh while still being bound by the series’ established canon. But, in a recent press conference, Hawley points out that the soul of Alien lies with its characters. When he stripped it down to that level, he found himself freer to find relevance in the returning Xenomorph.

“Well, an Alien movie is a two-hour survival story,” he begins, “and a television show is long form in which you have to invest in a lot of characters who don’t die and explore these characters and the themes that were introduced in the Alien franchise. So, the challenges are, for me, let’s take the monsters out of it for a minute and think about what the show? Where’s the drama that we’re investing in week to week? I’m not worried about the monsters. When we put the monsters in, that’s the money-back guarantee, right? So, we had to create this human drama in which you have a lot of human monsters as well and explore a lot of issues about the world that we’re living in, just projected into the future.”

Of course, Hawley’s series also faces the daunting challenge of living up to the legacy of Ridley Scott, who first created the world and arguably understands it better than anyone. However, given the opportunity to work with the legendary director, Hawley suggests that Scott’s involvement was nothing but supportive.

“I started talking to Sir Ridley early on in the process,” he points out. “I had done my due diligence in thinking through an idea that I wanted to explore within the show, but first I wanted to talk to Ridley and see, you know, both his experiences on the first film and then what was in his mind going into Prometheus and Alien: Covenant and start to let him in on some of the ideas that that I had for the show. And every time I spoke to him, he was storyboarding what felt like a different movie. I think in the course of our conversations, it was The Last Duel. It was [House of] Gucci. It was Napoleon, so in the course of making a single season of television, that 87-year-old man made three or four huge films.”

“So, I think my job as a filmmaker is really to make decisions, right?,” Hawley continues. “And Ridley’s job is the same. I think once he realized that, you know, he did not have those responsibilities on this show, he wanted to move on to the next thing. He’s got a real agenda. So, we would speak from time to time, but mostly after I was on the runway, he was on his own runway.”

 In fact, one might be surprised to find that the hardest thing for Hawley while reviving the world of Alien wasn’t with the series itself. Instead, it was being away from his family for long periods of time.

Hawley reflects. “You know, there’s typically a trade-off that you get from going to Bangkok and filming the show at that scale. But, it’s hard to be away from home and the family. The job stuff is just fun, and yeah, there’s a lot of challenge, but we have a great team, and I have a lot of people that I can rely on, including the people in this room. And so, I just went home at the end of every day, excited for the next day.”

“This job is, just like the last one I did with Noah, it was just a joy,” echoes star Timothy Olyphant. “It’s child’s play. It’s a ton of fun. The material is great. Usually, if you’re in a big, giant, epic sci-fi, you have to sacrifice the good material, and this one we ordered the combo platter. You don’t get that that often and, like I said before, I like to work with these people on the set. I liked hanging out with them off the set. My wife was with me in Bangkok. This magical place. I didn’t get paid enough. [laughter] I guess that would be the hardest thing, if I really searched deep, that would be the thing that hurt the most.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be an Alien film without the inclusion of synthetic humans and, in Earth, Hawley steps up his game. With multiple children AI’s and Olyphant’s Kirsh, the series doubles down on their usage and, by extension, their importance. And, specifically in the case of Olyphant, he finds himself standing in the shadows of iconic performances by Ian Holm and Lance Hendrickson before him.

“I’m a huge fan of those gentlemen and their work,” beams Olyphant. “I’ve watched that performance by Ian Holm god knows how many times. It’s so beautiful and subtle. It was great the first time when he was hiding the ball was great. The second time when you knew the joke. If I thought of those guys at all, it was simply because I was inspired by them and their work. Mostly, I just showed up to do a Noah Hawley project.”

“Yeah, we talked a little bit about the programing that goes into a Kirsh,” Hawley points out, “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, you know, potentially if you don’t seem to see eye-to-eye with him, maybe just give him a little smile and tell him, [forget] you with your eyes.”

“It was always fun to play around with the idea that,” Olyphant continues. “I don’t know, maybe he started to develop some thoughts of his own, and we’ll see.”

Intriguingly, Alien: Earth begins with allusions to Peter Pan. While the connection to Disney is obvious, Hawley believes that the reference comes organically to the series, especially once children were involved with the story.

“For me, it started with the fact that I’m raising kids, and I’m raising kids in this world in which the natural world is starting to turn on us and the technology we’ve created, the jury’s out on whether that’s going to turn on us,” he recalls. “And when they asked me if I had any ideas for Alien, I thought, well, that’s what Alien is about. It’s about these primordial monsters of our past that are trying to kill Sigourney. And then the AI future we realize is also trying to kill her. So, humanity is trapped between the AI future and the monsters of the past. Once I started with this idea of bringing children into this story—the human minds transferred into synthetic bodies—then the Peter Pan analogy came pretty quickly after that.”

In this way, Alien: Earth taps naturally into the current cultural conversations about the nature of our own humanity and our relationship to technology.

Says Hawley, “I spoke earlier about the idea at the heart of Alien is really humanity trapped between nature and technology, and they’re both trying to kill us. The question becomes, in an Alien movie, can these two or three human beings survive? In the show, it’s can humanity itself survive, which leads to the sort of natural follow up question is like, well, we do deserve to survive? Can we rise as a species? The best way to explore that is to look at the adult human world through the eyes of a child. Because children, of course, you know, they’re bad liars. They don’t know how to pretend they’re not scared. And when you’re driving around and they go, “Daddy, why is that man living on the street?” And you go, “You’re just going to have to get used to that,” right? They go, well, “I don’t think we need to get used to that,” right? They don’t take for granted some of the things that adults take for granted. And so going in through Wendy’s point of view and the other Lost Boys really allowed her to have the sort of pure decency at the heart of her that could then confront the sort of complacency, you know, all the way up to the evils of the adult world.”

With this in mind, Alien: Earth becomes more than just a fine ride into a world we love. Asked what he hoped people take away from the series, Hawley admits that his audience has more than a good time. Instead, he wants them to reflect on some of the bigger issues of our time.

“I think what drew me to this and what I want the audience to take away from it really is my ambition for this genre to be bigger than just entertainment, for it to provide the entertainment, to be a fun show, with all the action and horror we have,” he confesses. “But I think science fiction has a responsibility to really look at the issues that we’re wrestling with on this earth and try to envision a future in which we can solve them. And so, my hope is that people come away, you know, they ride the roller coaster episode to episode, but they come out of it still thinking about the show and talking about the show afterwards.”

Alien: Earth is available on Disney+ on Thursday, August 8^th, 2025.