- Sigourney Weaver said she only watches Alien: Earth with her husband because she’s too scared to “see it by myself.”
- The actress, who played Ellen Ripley in four Alien movies, said the FX series is “beautifully cast and beautifully done.”
- Weaver had previously opined that bringing xenomorphs to Earth sounds “boring.”
Sigourney Weaver remains wary of xenomorphs after battling them in four Alien movies.
The Avatar star told Collider that she’s enjoying FX’s Alien: Earth — Noah Hawley’s TV spinoff of the sci-fi horror franchise that made her a household name. However, the actress is too afraid of the series’ menacing extraterrestrials to watch the show alone.
“I’m watching it like a real person,” Weaver said, noting that she hasn’t watched the show via screeners. “I have to make a date with my husband because I don’t want to see it by myself in case one of those things comes out of the screen. So we have to set it up. So I’m behind seeing it, but the ones I’ve seen are fascinating.”
FX; Earl Gibson III/Deadline via Getty
Weaver, who played Ellen Ripley in the first three Alien movies and her clone in the fourth, said that she appreciates the broad thematic and narrative ambition of the FX series, which takes place in 2120, two years before Ridley Scott’s original 1979 classic.
“I admire Noah’s work — Fargo — and I was curious to see what he would do with this world,” Weaver said. “And what I admire about it is: It’s not alien-centric. It is about what world we will be living in in 100 years. I think the scope of it is so much bigger than an Alien project.”
Weaver went on to explain how the series, which centers on rival corporations skirmishing over a valuable spacecraft that crashes on Earth, speaks to our modern times. “[It’s] much more about our world, what’s going to be happening to it, what’s going to be important, the role of greed,” she said. “It’s just exploded some of the themes that have always been part of the Alien series, and I think it’s beautifully cast and beautifully done. I can’t believe it’s television, frankly.”
Patrick Brown/FX
That’s a change of tune for the actress, who previously criticized the idea of bringing the Alien franchise to our home planet while discussing her lack of involvement in Scott’s prequel Prometheus in 2012.
“Fox and I disagreed on how the franchise should continue,” Weaver told The Independent. “But I’m glad it’s Ridley doing it, and I’ll be as curious as anyone, or maybe more curious, to see it. I think he took my suggestion. Fox wanted to go to Earth and I said: ‘That’s so boring. Who wants to see aliens on Earth?’ I said, ‘Go back to the planet [from the original movie].'”
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Weaver has not appeared in an Alien film since 1997’s Alien: Resurrection, which saw the actress play a clone of her original character. However, she did return to play Ripley via voiceover for the 2014 video game Alien: Isolation, which primarily focused on her character’s daughter.
Alien: Earth airs new episodes on Tuesdays on FX and Hulu.
