Belinda cannot be tamed. Her latest album, ‘Indómita,' proves it
In the making of her fifth studio album 'Indómita,' the Mexican singer and actor began to understand that what made her hard to contain — in life, in love and in her career — was worth writing an album about.
'I was reading a book and all of a sudden the word 'indómita' appeared,' says Belinda in an audio call from her home in Mexico City. 'For two days, I kept dreaming of that word. 'Indómita, Indómita,'' says Belinda during a recent audio call from her home in Mexico City.
Out on June 5, 'Indómita' is an assortment of corridos tumbados, reggaeton, rock and pop ballads with exciting collaborations — ranging from the American rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars to Latin stars like Tokischa and Tito Double P.
'This album is very special, not just for women but for everyone who feels untameable, who feels strong, who feels like a warrior,' she explains.
The title directly translates to indomitable, or untameable, a term that seems to perfectly suit the 35-year-old artist, whose long and prosperous career made her an international household name.
Born in Madrid, Spain, as Belinda Peregrín Schüll, but known widely by her mononym, Belinda began her legacy in Mexican television, taking on lead roles in early 2000's childhood telenovelas like 'Amigos x siempre,' 'Aventuras en el tiempo,' and 'Cómplices Al Rescate,' where she played a set of twins who has been separated at birth. She also broke through the Disney sphere, appearing in the popular 2006 sequel of 'The Cheetah Girls 2' as Marisol, a Spanish pop star and competitor of the titular girl band.
Belinda's music career has been equally as fruitful, including a stint as a singing coach on the TV competition 'La Voz' and dozens of hit singles, such as the popular 'Amor a Primera Vista,' a 2020 collaboration with Los Ángeles Azules and Lalo Ebratt. Her previous studio albums, 2003's 'Belinda,' 2006's 'Utopía,' 2010's 'Carpe Diem' and 2013's 'Catarsis' have all graced Billboard's Top Latin Albums chart.
Her new LP marks a personal artistic triumph for the artist, given its unique regional Mexican edge. '300 Noches,' her 2024 corrido track with Natanael Cano, made No. 4 on the Mexican Billboard pop chart and appeared on the Billboard Global 200, making it Belinda's first appearance on the chart. Other corridos tumbados, like the rugged 'La Cuadrada' featuring Tito Double P and the blistering 'Mírame Feliz' with Xavi, unleash a new alter ego of the famed singer known as 'Beli bélica,' the latter of which means 'warrior' in Spanish.
'With this album, I'd like to open up the door to more women to sing corridos tumbados of heartache,' says Belinda.
The record is already scorching hot, with songs like 'Cactus' making a subtle, prickly nod to her past relationship with Mexican crooner Christian Nodal, who famously tattooed her eyes on his chest. There's also the reggaeton-corrido fusion called 'La Mala,' which coyly addresses the rumors that Belinda is a cold, calculated lover — which heightened in the wake of her high-profile relationship.
Still, her notoriety as a heartbreaker has simultaneously granted her sainthood status from fans, who created fake prayer cards of the enchanting star to bolster their own love life.
'This album was made up of things that we live every day,' says Belinda. 'Someone breaks our heart, we feel better, we fall in love, they break our heart again and so forth. Life is like that.'
But 'Indómita' is much more than Belinda's foray into regional Mexican music; there's also 'Jackpot,' a dazzling club alongside Kenia Os, a tribute to lightning-fast cars in 'Rayo McQueen' — and even her love of anime in 'Death Note.'
'I'm a versatile artist and this record reflects that,' says Belinda.
This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity.
What motivated you to release this album over a decade after your last one, 'Catarsis'?I know it might seem like it's been a long time, but I never left. I've always been involved in music. I've done collaborations with Los Ángeles Azules, 'Amor a Primera Vista,' that was super popular, with Ana Mena in 'Las 12,' Lola Indigo and Tiny in 'La Niña de la Escuela,' with Juan Magán and Lapiz Conciente in 'Si No Te Quisiera.'
I've made a lot of music, but obviously this record means so much to me. It's not the same to work on collaborations and music for other artists as it is to do it for myself. The album is full of collaborations with Thirty Seconds to Mars, who are one of my favorite bands of all time. It also has Kenia Os, Tito Double P, Neton Vega, who's a hard-hitting act in the world of reggaeton and corridos tumbados, and Natanael Cano, who I can't forget either. It's a complete album, with lots of different styles.
Many of the songs on this album are corridos tumbados. Why did you dive into that style of music?It's a really stigmatized genre, and a genre that is specifically for men and for certain kinds of lyrics. I wanted to break that [idea] and say that instruments used — like the trombone, the alto horn, tololoche — aren't just for men or for specific lyrics or a specific market. There can be more romantic lyrics, a mixing of sounds like pop with urban music. The challenge was also getting my collaborators to believe in this too, since they are used to other topics, but everyone trusted me and believed in the song[s] since the beginning and it was organic.
Tell me more about your collaborations. What did you learn from them and what did you teach them?They're so talented and play instruments very well, especially Natanael Cano — you can tell him to play any instrument. He's very talented. We were in the studio and he started to play a Metallica song and I was like, 'Wow!' Although we might pigeonhole them into this genre, they're very versatile and talented. I admire them.
One of the singles of this album, 'Cactus,' talks about your feelings toward an ex. How did it feel to release your emotions? And would you say that it helped you heal, as the song suggests?I love healing through music. The first phrase of the song goes: 'Therapy helps, but music heals more bad-ass.' Perhaps I couldn't express with words what I can through music. As a composer we express our emotions through our lyrics. But it's also important that people remember that not everything is based on experiences. It's music so that people can identify themselves in love or heartache. I never mention anyone by name, but people can make their own conclusions or deductions. At the end of the day, I make music for people who can relate to the lyrics.
You've been in the spotlight for so many years. Do you believe there are two Belindas that exist? As in, one that is for the public and one that's just for close family members?Of course, I can guarantee it. There's also a song where I express that idea that many times people have categorized me as a bad character, 'La Mala.' At the end of the day, I know who I am and the people around me know the heart that I have — my feelings and intentions, my day-to-day. That's what counts for me. If I paid attention to every comment [people made of me], my God, I'd be locked up in a room without an exit, which sometimes does happen to me.
How do you tune out those outside critics?I try not to see these things. Sometimes it's inevitable but I'm also not going deep into the web to find what people are saying. I do other more productive things that nourish me.
Obviously it hurts, because even if certain comments are not true, they still hurt because they carry negative energy. I don't want to give into these comments as truth, but that energy of negativity or insult or humiliation or anything that comes from a negative side, obviously has a consequence. So one has to be careful about how they express themselves, because there's so much negativity that exists, so it would be nice if we could just throw a bit more of love.
I heard you're a big anime fan, and you show that in your song 'Death Note.' Why was it important to include that?I'm [an] otaku, even if people don't believe it. I really like anime. I'm a fan of 'One Piece,' 'Death Note,' everything, 'Attack on Titan,' but 'Death Note' is my favorite. It's pretty dark, but Ryuk is one of my favorite characters in life. I've always been a fan of terror, because within the darkness, there's always some light.
You were born in Spain but were raised in Mexico. How have you navigated both identities?I can't pick one or the other, but I've always considered myself Mexican, because I was raised in Mexico and my accent is Mexican. I'm very, very much Latina.
What advice would you give your younger self?Don't take everything so personally and enjoy life. When I was little, I would think too much about what the world thought. I was always like, 'do you like it? Oh you don't, why?' and I would suffer. And now if I like it, OK, and if no one else likes it, then too bad, I like it!
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Buzz Feed
29 minutes ago
- Buzz Feed
Celebrities Whose Partners Didn't Know They Were Famous
It sounds like something out of a fanfiction — you fall in love with a beautiful stranger who just so happens to be famous. While it sounds more like a trope than true-to-life, it's surprisingly more common than you'd think! Here are 19 celebs whose partners had no idea they were famous: Maggie Gyllenhaal's husband, fellow actor Peter Sarsgaard, told People, "I met Maggie at a dinner [in 2001], and I didn't even know she was an actress. I knew nothing about her, but it was instant. Then Secretary came out maybe six months later, and I was like, 'Oh, whoa. Okay. She's not like any other actress in the world.'" Olivia Munn and NFL player Aaron Rodgers dated from 2014-2017, but she "had no idea" who he was at first. She told Conan, "When I met him, I said, 'So what do you do?' And he said, 'Oh, I play football.' And I go, 'Cool. What college?' He's like, 'Oh, no. I play professional.' And I was like, 'Cool, what position?' He's like, 'Quarterback.' 'Cool.' That was kind of it, not knowing that he's, you know, Super Bowl MVP or any of those things, but all I saw was that he was, like, really attractive. I didn't really care what he did. I was like, 'You are such a big man!'" Likewise, Aaron Rodgers's ex-fiancé, Shailene Woodley, whom he was got engaged to in 2021 but broke up with in 2022, wasn't really familiar with his career when they first met. She told The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, "I never thought I'd be engaged to someone who threw balls for a living. I never thought as a little girl, 'Yeah, when I grow up, I'm going to marry someone who throws balls, yeah!' But he's really just so good at it, and I'm very impressed... Before I met him, I'd never seen one football game before." She continued, "I didn't really grow up with sports, especially American sports. It was never really on my radar. When we met, also, I knew he was a football guy, but I didn't know what kind of a football guy he was... I don't know him as a football guy. I know him as, like, the nerd who wants to host Jeopardy. … He just happens to also be very good at sports." Tom Pelphrey didn't realize that his fiancé, Kaley Cuoco, starred in The Big Bang Theory — which was extremely popular, long-running, and multi-award winning — until his mom's partner kept calling her by her character's name. He actually "hadn't seen Kaley in anything" because he "was living in upstate New York, on a dirt road, in the middle of the woods, without much Wi-Fi" before they met. Tom told W magazine, "When I first brought Kaley to New Jersey to meet my family and friends, my mom's partner — who apparently was a Big Bang Theory fan — was there, and he kept calling her Penny. I had no clue what was going on. So I pulled Kaley aside, like, 'I'm sorry, I don't understand what's happening. Why does he keep calling you Penny?' She's like, 'That's my character in The Big Bang Theory.' I was completely unaware. I've watched a few episodes with her since, and, obviously, she's fantastic." When Richard Gere and his wife, publicist and political activist Alejandra Gere, first crossed paths, she knew he was famous, but she mistook him for a different celebrity! He told Elle Spain, "She had no idea who I was when we met. None. She didn't see movies, which was great. I was very happy about that." Alejandra cut in, "No, wait a minute. Richard, I knew who you were. I didn't see many of your movies." He added, "She thought I was George Clooney, but other than that, she knew exactly who I was." In 1976, Henry Winkler and his wife, publicist Stacey Weitzman, met at a Beverly hills clothing store. He told People, "She was wearing purple parachute pants, and she had red hair, and without her even saying a word, I thought, 'Woah, beautiful woman standing in front of me.' I came back to the store the next week, and [she] was there. And within 10 minutes, I learned how strong she is. I said, 'Would you like to go for a soda? I just have to make a quick stop to buy a wedding gift.' And she said, 'I am not a gift service!' But then she changed her mind, and we went across the street and had ginger ales." At the time, Henry was in his third season of starring as Fonzie on Happy Days, but Stacey had no clue. He told AARP Magazine, "She wanted to go to the movies. And I told her that might be difficult. She wanted to know why. I said, 'I don't know how to describe it to you.' When we got to the theater, I told her we should sit in the back. She didn't understand, so we sat in the middle of the theater. And the entire theater came over and said hello. And Stacey said, 'Oh!'" Simone Biles met her husband, NFL player Jonathan Owens, on the celebrity dating app Raya. He "honestly didn't know who she was" because he "never really watched gymnastics before [he] first started talking to her." On Simone's Facebook Watch docuseries, he said, "That's how I would tell people, and they're like, 'Simone Biles?! You for real, the gymnast?!' And I'm like, 'Man, she's good like that?!' Like I didn't [know]." Serena Williams first met her husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, when he sat at the breakfast table next to hers at a hotel in Italy. Annoyed that he didn't pick one of the many empty tables further away, one of her friends told him he shouldn't sit there because there was a rat. She told Vanity Fair, "We were trying to get him to move and get out of there. He kind of refuses, and he looks at us. And he's like, 'Is there really a rat here?' 'No, we just don't want you sitting there. We're going to use that table.' 'I'm from Brooklyn. I see rats all the time.' 'Oh, you're not afraid of rats?' 'No.'" At that moment, Alexis was "98 percent sure" who she was. However, he'd "never watched a match on television or in real life." He told VF, "It was literally the sport — even if ESPN was announcing tennis updates, I would just zone out... I really had no respect for tennis." They talked about the tech conference he was in town to speak at, and though she didn't know what Reddit was, she pretended she did and claimed she'd been on it that very morning. They changed topics to her website, which he offered to help with. Her agent invited him to that night's tennis match, and he and Serena better connected when she later invited him to another match in Paris. Shaun White "actually didn't know anything about" his fiancé, Nina Dobrev, when they both presented at an event in Florida in 2019. Afterwards, they grabbed food together. He told People, "The place was packed. And she was like, 'Let me go see if I can get a table.'" As she spoke with the blushing host, Shaun wondered to himself if Nina had told her, "There's an old gold medalist over there who wants a table." However, when a group of employees walked over, they asked, "Can we get a photo ... with her?" Shaun said, "And I was like, 'What's happening? What's going on?' It was actually really funny." When Kristen Bell first met her husband, Dax Shepard, at a mutual friend's birthday dinner, he'd recently risen to fame on Punk'd. However, unaware of who he was, she wondered, "Is that one of the guys from Jackass or something?" On Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist, she said, "The only thing I remember is that he talked so much... There were no sparks whatsoever... Two weeks later, we both met at a hockey game... We saw each to flirt. Then a day after that, I get a text that says, 'Hi, my name is Dax. I violated your privacy and got your number from Shauna [Robertson]. How do you feel about that?' And I was like, 'Excuse me? You sound stimulating.'" Model and designer Camila Alves knew who Matthew McConaughey was and had seen his movies, but when he came into the West Hollywood club where she was hanging out, she didn't recognize him. She told Access Hollywood, "We had two interactions at the bar. The first interaction, I did not know who he was. At the time, he had a really long beard, and he had this Rasta hat. He was all covered up, and I didn't really realize who he was." However, she realized who he was after spotting Lance Armstrong, Matthew's close friend at the time. She continued, "Lance came to talk to me. You knew they were always together, so I'm like, OK, I'm outta here. I'm going to the other side of the room!" Even though she moved away, she caught his eye. Matthew told The Howard Stern Show, "So I'm healthily single at a club on Sunset. I'm not even a club guy, but this night I was a club guy. And I'm making margaritas at the end of the table, and this figure moves across the room, and I remember to myself, I go, 'What is that?' I didn't say, 'Who is that?' I said 'What is that?' ...She sits down, and I can't get my eyes off her, and I'm waving, trying to get [her attention], 'Hey, over there!' Finally catch her eye, and as soon as she looks at me, the Jiminy Cricket in me says, 'Boy, get off your ass, this is not the type of woman you call across the room.' I go over and introduce myself. I do the smart thing of inviting her and her friends over." Alexa PenaVega and her husband, Big Time Rush member Carlos PenaVega, met at a Bible study at their mutual friend's house. Their friend had invited Alexa, but Carlos had actually been invited by an ex he was hoping to rekindle a relationship with. Carlos told The War Cry, "I had known of Alexa, but she was just 'that chick from Spy Kids.' She had no idea who I was, though, and when we first met, I was completely smitten. I became so nervous I actually started quoting Spy Kids, which did not work because she told our mutual friend I was so weird." Their friend had actually been trying to get them to meet for years! Alexa said, "It was our mutual friend, Andrew, who invited us. I've known him since I was 13 years old, and Carlos has known him since he was 18, and all this time, Andrew would tell us that we were very compatible. He would always say things like, 'You have to meet. You two just have to meet,' but the timing never worked out. We were either in other relationships or just not ready to date at all. So, Andrew had invited me to his Bible study quite a few times. It was a Bible study at his house that he led, and just this one particular time, I decided, 'You know what? I'll go check it out,' and this is after a couple years of him having this Bible study, that I finally decided to go. It just so happened to be the night Carlos showed up as well." Hairdresser Danielle Jonas "didn't know who the Jonas Brothers were" when she met her husband, Kevin Jonas, on a family vacation in the Bahamas in 2007. After they first crossed paths, he saw her walking down the beach, a flower tucked in her hair, and decided to pursue a relationship with her. During his best man's toast at their 2007 wedding, Kevin's brother Joe reportedly said, "I'm the one responsible for getting them together. I hit on Danielle first." Lena Dunham's husband, musician Luis Felber, "had to Google" her before their blind date. He told The Sunday Times, "Then I went on her Instagram, and I saw her dancing to a song called 'Red Hot Pussy' in her garden in LA. Lena puts herself out there in a really special way. That was all I had to go on at the time." Rapper Cordae dated Naomi Osaka from 2019-2025, but, when they met at an LA Clippers basketball game, he wasn't aware she was a huge tennis star. He told GQ, "It's not my sport. If you asked me about tennis, before being immersed in it because of Naomi, I could only give you Venus and Serena Williams, you know? Because they're just a part of the culture." Julianna Marguilies was already known for her starring role on ER when she met her husband, attorney Keith Lieberthal. She told People, "He honestly didn't know who I was. I mean, if he had seen my work, he didn't know. He was in law school. I was like, 'There's a couple movies I don't want you to see.'" Alfonso Ribeiro met his wife, blogger Angela Unkrich, at a hotel in Beverly Hills. In a joint interview, she told Yahoo Lifestyle, "I called him my stalker. I didn't know who he was at the time. He told me he was a director, which you were. And I was very much in the 'I don't want to date anyone in entertainment' [phase]." After he made "first, second, third moves," she agreed to go out with him and made a reservation at a restaurant. However, unbeknownst to him, she actually planned to ditch the date early so she could go home and watch the new Grey's Anatomy. She said, "I don't think it was more than 10 minutes that went by, and I was like, 'Huh, he's different than I thought.'" Lily Allen and her husband, David Harbour, whom she separated from in 2025, met when they matched on Raya. She told the Jonathan Ross Show, "It was the first time I'd been on this dating app. I was scrolling through and landed on David's profile and pressed accept. I didn't know who he was. I thought he was just, like, a sexy policeman from a reality TV show. He was wearing a policeman's uniform. It was a still from Stranger Things. I'd never seen Stranger Things." And finally, while Michael Cera was promoting Arrested Development in Paris, he met his wife, Nadine Cera, in a bar. In Paris to study, she had no clue who Michael was. He told the Guardian, "We trip out about that all the time. It's completely unlikely that we would ever meet... She thought I was Swedish until we spoke. I didn't know if she would speak English, and if we would even have a chance to talk, and it was very lucky that she did because we wouldn't have a son, we wouldn't have a relationship." Do you know of any other celebs whose partners didn't know they were famous? Tell us in the comments!
Los Angeles Times
29 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Developing ‘Alien: Earth' was all about building suspense — and getting Easter eggs right
Here's what one might expect from a series rooted in the 'Alien' universe: dimly lit spaceship corridors, sleeping pods, computer screens, something slithering in the shadows and, of course, lots and lots of blood. Here's what you don't expect: lore from 'Peter Pan.' But then FX's 'Alien: Earth' was created by Noah Hawley, who made his narrative mark with adaptations of 'Fargo' and 'Legion.' And for Hawley, who was 9 when the first film debuted, his relationship to 'Alien' has always been rooted in childhood and suspense. He remembers how thrilled he was to be invited on a birthday outing to watch Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi masterpiece, and the disappointment when his parents objected to the film's R-rating. (He had to settle for Peter Falk and Alan Arkin in 'The In-Laws.') It wasn't until years later, as a teenager hanging out at a friend's house, that he finally experienced — on LaserDisc — one of the most chilling and visually iconic renderings of extraterrestrial life in the cinematic canon. And, as with millions of other viewers, the mid-film reveal — the defining moment when an alien being bursts from the chest of a space crew member — took him completely by surprise. 'Because of its pace and because of these blue-collar space truckers, [the film] lulls you into this sense of ordinariness,' Hawley says. 'So when the story really starts, which isn't for like 45 minutes into the movie, what happens is so shocking. It's the opposite of how a horror movie is built. You're supposed to feel dread from the first moment. This doesn't do that. It's earned.' That subversive structure is what came to mind when FX, all the way back in 2018, asked if he had an idea how to turn the storied sci-fi film franchise into a series. Of course he did. He approached it the way he's done with other established properties, including for a 'Star Trek' film that never made it to screen: 'What I like is the original lives in my head, it's in the corner of my eye. What are the feelings that linger with me from the film? And how do I create those feelings?' The suspense was not just narrative; between delays caused by Disney's takeover of Fox and the dual strikes of 2023, it has taken seven years for Hawley's contribution to the nine-film 'Alien' mythology — delivering the franchise's first TV show — to make its big reveal. Premiering with two episodes on FX and Hulu Tuesday, the series is set in 2120, two years before the events of the original film. Viewers are introduced to a new crew charging through space aboard the Maginot — owned by the Weyland-Yutani company, the same megalomaniacal enterprise that sent Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and her crew into orbit to retrieve the double-jawed, acid-filled Xenomorphs, the franchise's central alien antagonist, for weaponization. After a 65-year mission spent gathering specimens of alien life, the Maginot is on its way back to Earth when it crashes into a densely-populated city, governed by a rival corporation, Prodigy. Prodigy, of course, wants to retrieve whatever findings its competitor has acquired and all manner of mystery and mayhem ensues. The Times spoke with Hawley and his creative team about building the world of 'Alien: Earth,' which filmed in Thailand on 13 sound stages spread across five facilities. With warring megacorporations, artificial intelligence and the specter of an existential crisis for humanity itself, the series may feel disturbingly familiar to viewers in 2025. But Hawley is more interested in mythology and cautionary tales than headlines, and one far older than 'Alien.' In 'Alien: Earth,' Prodigy, one of the five megacorporations locked in a technological arms race, is run by a young, mad trillionaire known as Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin). His company has developed 'hybrids,' humanoid robots infused with the human consciousness of children whose bodies were plagued by illness — they're known as the Lost Boys — and led by 'Wendy' (Sydney Chandler), once a 12-year-old girl named Marcy who was the first to undergo the procedure. And no, Hawley says, the 'Peter Pan'-Disney tie-in wasn't a mandate by the new bosses — 'I ended up feeling clever because I had managed to marry these [Fox and Disney] brands without intending to do so,' he says. ''Peter Pan,' if you go back and read the book, is actually a really dark [story],' Hawley says. 'Peter is a really narcissistic, almost sociopathic boy. There's lines in there about how, when the kids grow up, he gets rid of them. Well, what does that mean? There's even a sequel where it's the daughter, Jane, he takes because Wendy is grown up. There's something really vindictive and weird about it. But it's also this iconic childhood [tale] — the kids never grow up.' Costume designer Suttirat Anne Larlarb says the rules for Wendy and the Lost Boys had to strike a balance between the individual within the system. When they start their lives in their adult bodies, they are introduced in their 'transition' suits — fitted, monochromatic white sets that resemble stretched gauze — and receive a tailored, structured wardrobe from which they can each choose a limited assortment of pieces with a controlled color palette that has more richness and life than the corporation's staff uniforms: 'Their daywear clothing feels individualized but is really a uniform, illustrating that they are each products developed in Neverland.' In 'Alien: Earth,' humanity is trapped between two existential threats — the primordial forces represented by the franchise's Xenomorphs, and the still unknown AI of the future. 'One of the things, in terms of thinking about the moment that we're living in right now with technology,' Hawley says, 'is this idea of who are the adults? I think what we really need right now are some real adults who think more about tomorrow than today. If you're going to hit the zeitgeist, you almost can't be aiming at it. When we wrote these scripts, there was no ChatGPT. But those issues, even Ridley saw them coming.' For those wondering if they'll recognize this 'Peter Pan'-influenced bit of the 'Alien' universe, well, one of the first choices Hawley had to make was environmental. 'Are we doing retro-futurism? Are we doing the the cathode ray tube screens? Are we doing all of that stuff that in 1979 felt super futuristic, and to us now, feels like 1979?' he says. 'And the answer is: of course we are. That is what 'Alien' is. What I had to wrestle with were the choices that Ridley made later on in 'Prometheus,' which was a prequel to 'Alien.' I was like, 'I can't really grapple with that in a way that makes sense to me. So I'm just going to adapt [the] first two films and focus on that aesthetic.'' The original script had the prequel opening with a 'Once upon a time ...' parable about Wendy and the Lost Boys. But that, he says, 'didn't say 'Alien' right away.' After some conversations with FX, the opening moments morphed into a truncated version of the original film's initial sequence that created a sense of unease by gradually drawing viewers into its deep space cargo ship. Jeff Russo, the show's composer, wanted the melodic cues to evoke one feeling: 'Oh f—. 'Alien.'' 'It's tension, release, tension, release,' he says. Russo used a hybrid metal-stringed instrument made by an Austrian company. 'I could use it in a lot of different ways — I can hit the metal and it makes very weird, otherworldly sounds; I can bow the strings and it has a very deep, very rich, very emotional yet scary sound.' The sound set up the tension inside the show's retro-futuristic space craft, which was designed to resemble the original film's famed vessel, the USCSS Nostromo. Andy Nicholson, the show's production designer, said his team meticulously studied the film and books featuring fan renderings to help replicate its labyrinth of metallic corridors, cramped compartments and blinking command center. It wasn't until construction on all but one of the ship's sets was complete that they were able to track down and access archived drawings from the original film's art department. Nicholson says there was a team of people who policed placement of Semiotic Standard, the color-coded information symbols designed by Ron Cobb for the Nostromo spacecraft, on Maginot. 'It was a huge responsibility and I didn't want to mess up,' Nicholson says. 'There's a history for the fans. You can't mess up the Easter eggs. There are specific things you can't get wrong because you'll just lose people.' Larlarb says about 2000 costumes — maybe more — were made, with 90% done in-house ('We didn't want it to feel like it was 'off the rack,'' she says). And the looks for the Maginot crew had to riff off the well-established uniform basis of the Nostromo and the Weylan-Yutani system. The palette is muted in creams and earth tones, with practical utilitarian jumpsuits and jackets. 'I made sure to create a uniform system that could reside unquestionably in that canon,' she says. 'Our Maginot is on a different kind of mission — a research exploration mission — so the crew uniforms needed to reflect a different branch from the original.' With the vessel's collision on Earth, the retro-futuristic aesthetic carries over into the sleek cityscape of Prodigy City. Nicholson says he pulled references of car interior designs and European furniture designs from around the late '70s — 'That was futuristic. It was the first time you saw, very briefly, digital displays in car dashboards' — as he thought about what Earth should look like in their version of the future. A piece of tech they decided to add? Tablets. 'They didn't really think about tablets in those first two films, but we have tablets,' Hawley says. 'So, what are those like?' The franchise's iconic space monster, the Xenomorph, is the returning megastar of the series. Originally designed for the 1979 film by surrealist artist H.R. Giger, the creature's looming presence is telegraphed early, in rapid cuts during the opening sequence. Like its relatives, it towers and stalks the wrecked spacecraft and whatever is in sight. The organism's various states of evolution — as an egg sac or the Facehuggers that hatch from them — are back too. The intensity of the Xenomorph's barbarism really begins in Episode 2, which places the skulking creature in more action-heavy sequences. (And just as in the original film, the figure is operated by a stunt performer; here it's Cameron Brown.) 'We show more of the Xenomorph than everybody else has shown,' says Dana Gonzales, a longtime collaborator of Hawley's and director of the episode. 'Later on, you realize why we do that; it doesn't just become a character that's coming out of a dark hole. There's this point where it's going to be much more present. Finding that language of how to get there, it starts with the first episode of giving fans what they hope to be tuning in for.' While its towering and sleek exoskeleton frame and otherworldly facial features — this one has human-like silver teeth, dripping in goo — remain a formidable sight, its invisible terror is what often brings the horror. One unforgettable scene ends in gruesome bloodshed, but its brutality is enforced by sound while the fatal attack is visually obscured. 'Noah and I both agreed that what you don't see and what you hear is scarier,' Gonzales says. 'We can't show a crazy amount of slaughter on TV — we do in the show, later on there are some pretty brutal scenes. But there's still a certain amount of containment.' Adds Russo, who sometimes used an Aztec death whistle, a small, skull-shaped instrument with air chambers that produce a scream-like sound, to signal the creature's horror: 'Music is only as important as the silence that precedes it. You don't see what the Xenomorph is doing, but when you see what happened afterwards, all of a sudden, it's all in your head.' The show adds other extraterrestrial creatures, just as eerie and lethal, to the 'Alien' canon too. But those are best seen, not read about — like every 'Alien' iteration, it's all about the suspense.
Los Angeles Times
29 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Dean Cain wants to join ICE. Forget Lex Luthor, this Superman is after Tamale Lady
There are people who keep reliving their glory days, and then there's Dean Cain. The film and TV actor is best known for his work in the 1990s series 'Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.' He was no Christopher Reeve or Henry Cavill. But enough people remember Cain in blue tights and a red cape so that he's a regular on the fan convention circuit. It's his calling card, so when the Trump administration put out the call to recruit more ICE agents, guess who answered the call? Big hint: Up, up and a güey! On Aug. 6, the up until then not exactly buzzworthy Cain revealed on Instagram that he joined la migra — and everyone else should too! The 59-year old actor made his announcement as an orchestral version of John Williams' stirring 'Superman' theme played lightly below his speech. Superman used to go after Nazis, Klansmen and intergalactic monsters; now, Superman — er, Cain — wants to go after Tamale Lady. His archenemy used to be Lex Luthor; now real-life Bizarro Superman wants to go to work for the Trump administration's equally bald-pated version of Lex Luthor: Stephen Miller. 'You can defend your homeland and get great benefits,' Cain said, flashing his bright white smile and brown biceps. Behind him was an American flag in a triangle case and a small statue depicting Cain in his days as a Princeton Tigers football player. 'If you want to save America, ICE is arresting the worst of the worst and removing them from America's streets.' Later that day, Cain appeared on Fox News to claim he was going to 'be sworn in as an ICE agent ASAP.' a role Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin later on clarified to the New York Times would be only honorary. His exaggeration didn't stop the agency's social media account to take a break from its usual stream of white supremacist dog whistles to gush over Cain's announcement. 'Superman is encouraging Americans to become real-life superheroes,' it posted 'by answering their country's call to join the brave men and women of ICE to help protect our communities to arrest the worst of the worst.' American heroes used to storm Omaha Beach. Now the Trump administration wants their version of them to storm the garden section of Home Depot. Its appeal to Superman is part of their campaign to cast la migra as good guys while casting all undocumented people as shadowy villains who deserve deportation — the faster and nastier the better. But as with almost anything involving American history, Team Trump has already perverted Superman's mythos. In early June, they put Trump, who couldn't leap over a bingo card in a single bound let alone a tall building, on the White House's social media accounts in a Superman costume. This was accompanied with the slogan: 'Truth. Justice. The American Way.' That was the day before Warner Bros. released its latest Man of Steel film. Even non-comic book fans know that the hero born Kal-El on Krypton was always a goody-goody who stood up to bullies and protected the downtrodden. He came from a foreign land — a doomed planet, no less — as a baby. His alter ego, Clark Kent, is humble and kind, traits that carry over when he turns into Superman. The character's caretakers always leaned on that fictional background to comment on real-world events. In a 1950 poster, as McCarthyism was ramping up, DC Comics issued a poster in which Superman tells a group of kids that anyone who makes fun of people for their 'religion, race or national origin ... is un-American.' A decade later, Superman starred in a comic book public service announcement in which he chided a teen who said 'Those refugee kids can't talk English or play ball or anything' by taking him to a shabby camp to show the boy the hardships refugees had to endure. The Trumpworld version of Superman would fly that boy to 'Alligator Alcatraz' to show him how cool it is to imprison immigrants in a swamp infested with crocodilians. It might surprise you to know that in even more recent times, in a 2017 comic book, Superman saves a group of undocumented immigrants from a man in an American flag do-rag who opened fire on them. When the attempted murderer claimed his intended targets stole his job, Superman snarled 'The only person responsible for the blackness smothering your soul ... is you.' Superman used to tell Americans that immigrants deserved our empathy; Super Dean wants to round them up and ship them out. Rapists? Murderers? Terrorists? That's who Superman né Cain says ICE is pursuing — the oft repeated 'worst of the worst' — but Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found that 71% of people currently held in ICE detention have no criminal records as of July 27 . I don't think the real Superman — by whom I mean the fictional one whom Cain seems to think he's the official spokesperson for just because he played him in a middling dramedy 30-some years ago — would waste his strength and X-ray vision to nab people like that. Dean 'Discount Superman' Cain should grab some popcorn and launch on a Superman movie marathon to refresh himself on what the Man of Steel actually stood for. He can begin with the latest. Its plot hinges on Lex Luthor trying to convince the U.S. government that Superman is an 'alien' who came to the U.S. to destroy it. 'He's not a man — he's an It. A thing,' the bad guy sneers at one point, later on claiming Superman's choirboy persona is 'lulling us into complacency so he can dominate [the U.S.] without resistance.' Luthor's scheme, which involves manipulating social media and television networks to turn public opinion against his rival, eventually works. Superman turns himself in and is whisked away to a cell far away from the U.S. along with other political prisoners. Luthor boasts that '[constitutional] rights don't apply to extraterrestrial organisms.' Tweak that line a little and it could have come from the mouth of Stephen Miller. Director James Gunn told a British newspaper that his film's message is 'about human kindness and obviously there will be jerks out there who are just not kind and will take it as offensive just because it is about kindness. But screw them.' He also called Superman an 'immigrant,' which set Cain off. He called Gunn 'woke' on TMZ and urged Gunn to create original characters and keep Superman away from politics. Well, Super Dean can do his thing for ICE and Trump. He can flash his white teeth for promotional Trump administration videos as he does who knows what for the deportation machine. Just leave Superman out of it.
