Alien: Earth star Timothy Olyphant only needed to do one thing to get into character for the sci-fi horror show on Disney+: ‘It does a lot of the work for me’

• Timothy Olyphant had a very simple hack to get into character for Alien: Earth
• The fan-favorite actor plays a synthetic called Kirsh in the sci-fi horror TV show
• He didn’t want to imitate actors who’ve played android characters in other Alien projects, either

Timothy Olyphant has lifted the lid on the surprisingly easy way he got into character for Alien: Earth – and the one thing he thought it would be “unfair” to do in the sci-fi horror show.

In the forthcoming FX TV Original, Olyphant plays Kirsh, a synthetic created by Prodigy Corporation, aka one of the five multinationals that effectively rule planet Earth. For the uninitiated: synethics are biomechanical humanoids – or, in layman’s terms, androids – that carry out various tasks for their human creators.

The Alien franchise is as renowned for its synthetics as it is for its iconic monsters and its bleak, dystopian sci-fi aesthetic. From Ian Holm’s Ash in the 1979 original, to Michael Fassbender’s David in 2011’s Prometheus and 2014’s Alien: Covenant, the Xenomorph-fronted multimedia property is full of memorable – not to mention mostly duplicitous – android characters.

So, how did Olyphant set about differentiating Kirsh from synthetics we’ve seen in Alien: Earth‘s movie siblings? And what’s the mysterious thing he avoided doing so Kirsh wouldn’t be compared to Ash, David, or other androids like Aliens‘ Bishop and Alien: Romulus‘ Andy?

“Quite honestly, bleaching my hair was intended to do exactly what you’re talking about,” Olyphant said when I asked him what he did to make Kirsh as distinct as possible. “That was just to say ‘Oh look, now he’s separated himself a little bit from what we’ve seen before.

“In the first movie, they [Alien‘s creative team] just made him [Ash] British. I felt it was unfair to do that [play a sinister character with a British accent] again. Quite honestly, no-one wants to hear me do that anyway!

“I do think that, in the simplest way, that little aesthetic adjustment does a lot of the work for me,” Olyphant added. “After that, I can just play the scenes and try not to get lost too much with overthinking it and just let all of the puzzle pieces fall into place.

“When a scene’s really well written, it does so much the work for you. It gives you a lot of room to play, because I always find it such a fun exercise to see how far you can take it in either direction and still feel like the scene holds together. It’s a fun place to work from.”

Alien: Earth launches with a two-episode premiere on Hulu (US) on August 12 and Disney+ (internationally) on August 13. Before it’s released, read my Alien: Earth review to see what I thought of its first six episodes, and then check out the section below for more coverage of the Noah Hawley-created project.

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