Alien's tragic star: The cruel fate of 7ft-tall Nigerian student who played monster in 1979 film after chance sighting - as new show airs

Daily Mail​

a day ago

With its spine-chilling special effects and utterly horrifying scenes, Alien was the film that bid a slimy goodbye to the 1970s.
The production, which told the story of a Space mission gone horribly wrong, made director Ridley Scott and actress Sigourney Weaver household names.
But the central star was someone whose face viewers never saw - and who was not an actor at all.
Nigerian art student Bolaji Badejo was the man chosen to play the eponymous monster after Scott's casting director spotted him in a pub.
Thanks to his 6ft 7inch, lanky frame, Badejo was the perfect fit for the $250,000 latex suit made by surrealist artist HR Giger.
And despite having no experience on the big or small screen, Badejo pulled off a role that would go down in cinema folklore.
Tragically though, by the time second sequel Alien 3 was released in 1992, Badejo was seriously ill with sickle cell anaemia, a disease he had suffered from all his life.
He would not live to see the further spin-off films, or the full impact of a franchise that is now being refreshed with the release of TV drama Alien: Earth.
The original film tells the story of the crew of space ship the Nostromo, who encounter a murderous life form on a planet far from Earth.
Weaver's performance as the the gun-toting Ripley disproved the notion that a woman would not be suitable for such a role.
But Badejo, who was plucked from total obscurity, proved that he was up to the task too.
In a 2008 interview, Scott recounted how he settled on the Nigerian to play the Alien after he was spotted by chance in London.
'We started with a stunt man who was quite thin, but in the rubber suit he looked like the Michelin Man,' he said.
'So my casting director [Peter Archer] said, "I've seen a guy in a pub in Soho who is about seven feet tall, has a tiny head and a tiny skinny body."
'So he brought Bolaji Badejo to the office.'
In the autumn of 1979, with his role in Alien still fresh in his mind, Badejo gave an interview to American film magazine Cinefantastique.
He said of the suit, the head of which was brought to life by a mechanics system created by the late special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi: 'It was all manual, remote-controlled.
'There's still a space in it for my head. I had it on just to make sure nothing goes wrong with the posture of the head or how tall it is in comparison to the other sequences.'
The slime that came out of the Alien's mouth was in fact K-Y Jelly, the popular lubricant more commonly associated with bedroom antics than film production.
'They must have had about 2,000 tubes of K-Y Jelly, just to get the effect of that slime coming out of his mouth,' Badejo added.
'A lot of it was spread around the face. I could barely see what was going on around me, except when I was in a stationary position while they were filming.
'Then there were a few holes I could look through.'
To prepare for his all-important role, Balejo took Tai Chi and mime classes so that he could glide in an alien-like fashion.
His widow, Yinka, previously recalled: 'Even though some days were long and gruelling and he had to make an early morning start, Bolaji never complained.'
Veronica Cartwright, who portrayed crew member Lambert, vividly remembered the moment Balejo's Alien attacked her.
She said in 2013: 'Believe me, when he comes after me in that scene I didn't have to do anything.
'I just looked at him and, the thing was, once he uncoiled he just stood there. And I just had to look at him, and you go, "oh s***".
'And instinctively what he did was just amazing. He had this incredible presence. And you know people say, "how did you make yourself scared?"
'I didn't do anything; I just had to look at him.'
Speaking to the Mail in 2010, Weaver said Balejo was separated from the rest of the cast so they would not become desensitised to his appearance.
'Ridley was very careful not to have him standing around, drinking tea with us during breaks and because he was kept apart from us and we never chatted, when it came to seeing him as this creature during a scene, it was electrifying.
'It didn't feel that we were acting scared at all.'
The star also heaped praise on the film, which she said 'put me on the map'.
'I think Alien really was ahead of its time,' she said.
'It showed that women and men could do the same jobs and that in many ways, women's patience and fortitude and organisation sometimes made them better suited for dangerous work than men.
'Ripley was a kind of warrior and I''m really glad she got to wear proper clothes instead of a tiny skirt or something.
'I didn't feel I had to be glamorous, whereas now with female action heroes I think there's more of an expectation of that.'
'It was my first big, real job and I remember during the first week, Ridley kept saying to me: "Try not to look in the camera" and I'd say: "I'm trying not to look in the camera, but you're always putting it right in front of me".
'I didn't know anything! So I cut my teeth on Alien and every time I did a sequel, I came back with that much more confidence and knowledge and technique.'
Balejo went on to have two children, Bibi and Yinka, with his wife and set up his own art gallery.
But his condition began to affect him more severely in the late 1980s. In 1992, a few months after his 39th birthday, the star fell ill.
He was taken to St Stephen Hospital in Lagos and died there in December 1992.
Alien: Earth has been made by director Noah Hawley, the man behind successful TV drama Fargo.
Airing on Disney+, it is set two years before the events of the first film.
The show depicts the aftermath of a deep space vessel crash-landing on Earth with an alien on board.
Alien:Earth stars Sydney Chandler as lead character Wendy, whilst Timothy Olyphant and Alex Lawther also feature.
Mr Hawley told Reuters: 'By bringing the story to Earth, we're shifting to, "can humanity itself survive, right?"
'And then it becomes a question of, "well, what is humanity, and do we really deserve to survive?"'