'Alien: Earth' star Timothy Olyphant: Scary AI tech is on our doorstep

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2 days ago

NEW YORK, Aug. 11 (UPI) -- Justified and Deadwood icon Timothy Olyphant says playing the synthetic Kirsh on Alien: Earth made him realize just how fast artificial intelligence technology is advancing in the real world.
"You can get [news] articles read by AI. It has gotten so good so quickly, those voices, where, in the beginning, you could tell there was an odd rhythm to them, and I remember thinking, 'Oh, so, this really is a thing where there could just be people around that aren't human and appear human in almost every way, that we probably don't have to dress it up much [for the show],'" Olyphant told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
"But it never occurred to me, the idea of putting people's brains and memories into synthetic bodies was on our doorstep and it appears as though it might be on our doorstep," he laughed. "And that's really quite shocking."
Premiering Tuesday on Hulu and FX in North America, and Disney+ internationally, the eight-episode series was created by Noah Hawley and takes place two years before the events of the 1979 sci-fi classic Alien, in a universe where corporations are more powerful than countries.
Olyphant stars as Kirsh, a synthetic at Prodigy's futuristic Neverland Research Island facility, where a group of humanoid robots with human consciousness are charged with finding and neutralizing the terrifying monsters who escape a spaceship crash on Earth.
The ensemble includes Sydney Chandler, Samuel Blenkin, Babou Ceesay, Alex Lawther, Essie Davis and David Rysdahl.
"Well, it feels like he appears to be some kind of mentor. Chief scientist, I think, is his official title," Olyphant said about Kirsh. "I'm also just not sure you can trust him."
At the end of the first episode, Kirsh delivers a chilling speech in which he warns about humans' precarious places in the food chain.
"It was just a great piece of writing," Olyphant said.
"I always tell Noah he could gift wrap those pages before he sends them to me," he added. "It's fun to get that material in your inbox and it makes memorizing the lines just really enjoyable. Just rehearsing it is fun. By the time you show up on set, it's kind of playtime and just working off of Sydney and that was easy."
Into the Badlands alum Ceesay plays Morrow, a cyborg security officer who was onboard the Weyland-Yutani ship that crashes and isn't initially forthcoming about what the vessel was transporting.
"He's got trauma. He's got a vision in his head for what his life is going to mean and be," Ceesay said.
"In terms of trying to get into that, as Tim said, it's just the writing is so incredible," he said. "You just turn up and play the scene and work with the other actor."
The Witcher and Peaky Blinders actor Blenkin described his character Boy Kavalier as a "horrible, horrible man who is the CEO of Prodigy Corporation, which is one of the newest of the five companies that rule the Earth."
"Governments? Don't need those. It's companies now. He sees himself as a rule breaker. Not just a competitor, but the person who is going to absolutely change the world," Blenkin said.
"He is one of those people who, no matter how stupid the idea is, no matter how insane the choice is, he's convinced it's the best for humanity because he's the most intelligent person on the planet," he added. "It was really fun to play somebody with that kind of blind ego."
Blenkin said Hawley's writing blends the character's mixed motivations of power and discovery.
"There's a little bit of both of those things at play and, as the season goes on, I think what happens is that the deeper, darker emotional motivations of what drives those people starts to get revealed," he added. "It's a great arc for a character."
Asked by UPI at a separate virtual press conference if the stars felt like filming together in Thailand, away from their loved ones, made them closer as a cast, Olyphant replied: "It was a special one, special place. Good time on set. Good time off the set. Really. The people in front of the camera, the people behind the camera. This was a good one."
Lawther, who plays human soldier and medic Hermit, agreed.
"It did bond us as a cast. I think for most of us, it was our first time in Thailand. We were there for longer than six months in the end," he said. "Although we were far away from home, we were really welcomed. It was a quite extraordinary host country to be working in."
The country's heat and humidity also influenced the show's story-lines and actors' performances, Lawther added.
"There's a lot of sweat in this show and that's, in part, thanks to the makeup department. But I'm sure a good 50 percent of that has to do with the 90 percent humidity of Thailand's climate. Then we had the quite extraordinary outdoor locations in Krabi and the jungle on the water, which lends itself to visually something quite dramatic."
Blenkin also noted that the show depicts a version of Earth where humans are "fighting humidity at every moment."
"So, you've got these fantastic figures who are kind of cleaning mold off the surface of the facility," Blenkin said.
"There's this feeling that there's a rot at the center of this that's not really going to go away, which I feel like is a really interesting parallel to the themes of the series," Blenkin added. "And, obviously, the humidity in Thailand made that feel very real. There wasn't much acting required."
Ceesay called Thailand one of his favorite places on Earth.
"I had the privilege of having my family there, as well. But we did develop incredible bonds because you're far away from home," he said. "You're all together in one place. It's not often that you enjoy yourself so much on set and working, but that you also have such a phenomenal group of people outside of it."
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