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Time of India
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
'Alien: Earth' Stars Essie Davis and Erana James on working with Adarsh Gourav: 'We bonded over 'Lagaan' and beautiful Indian music'
Stepping into the Alien universe is no small feat. For decades, the franchise has terrified, thrilled, and inspired audiences worldwide. Now, ' Alien: Earth ' introduces a fresh set of characters and concepts to the screen, with actors Essie Davis and Erana James at the heart of this high-stakes sci-fi action series. Davis plays a brilliant scientist with dangerous ambitions, while James takes on the role of a synthetic navigating a world threatened by the arrival of an alien. In a candid chat with ETimes, both actresses shared how they immersed themselves in the new saga while also helping lay the foundation for the future of the franchise. When asked about stepping into the world of the Xenomorph , Essie Davis said, "It's been an honour. It's been super exciting and lots of fun because we're with a really lovely group of actors who are all very talented. And the crew have been amazing. It's actually been a pretty special time." Unlike the franchise's fabled characters, this instalment introduces audiences to a new wave of young talents. Essie plays the role of Dame Silvia, a motherly figure to the Lost Boys — a group of synthetics with the consciousness of children but in adult bodies. Sharing her thoughts on these new characters, Essie explained, "These characters are fantastic introductions. My character is one of the highest-ranking scientists in the world of Prodigy. She's a geneticist and psychologist creating synthetic hybrids — putting the consciousness of a human child into a super-powerful, man-made body. The fact that she's been able to do that is incredibly powerful." by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like How to Find Web Dev Services [Read] SearchPad Learn More Undo Further explaining the concept, she added, "The synthetic human hybrids are an amazing idea — they explore both the dream of human immortality and the danger of where artificial intelligence can lead. Synthetics are a wonderful creation that may or may not go the way their creators intended." Erana plays Curly, a synthetic in the series. Asked whether the show still pays homage to Ridley Scott 's original while branching into new territory, she said, "I've heard Noah [Hawley] say that season 1 is almost like a group of concepts, and there's so much room to grow. What's established in this first season is huge. There's a lot of world-building. You really meet the world where it's at in season 1, and I think there are lots of branches to build from." The series also introduces Indian actor Adarsh Gourav as one of the synthetics, Sightly. Speaking about working with the Desi breakout talent, Erana shared, "I got to have weeks, and at some point months, of training with him, finding the inner child. We played a lot of music, a lot of instruments, just a lot of play to find that inner child." When asked if Adarsh introduced them to any Indian sci-fi or alien films, Essie quipped, "No, he didn't introduce me to any of those! I'm going to have to go have words with him about that!" Opening up about their bond, she continued, "But one of my favourite films ever is Lagaan , so we bonded over that on the first day we met. He actually sang a lot of beautiful Indian music to us. He's a beautiful singer, a fantastic actor, and a super delightful man. It was really good fun working with Adarsh." Adarsh Gourav is no stranger to international audiences. He gained global recognition for his performance in the Academy Award-nominated film The White Tiger and has also appeared in acclaimed projects like the Apple TV+ series Extrapolations. About Alien: Earth Alien: Earth | Official Trailer | FX Set in the Alien universe, 'Alien: Earth' follows a young woman and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers who come face-to-face with the planet's biggest threat when the space vessel Maginot crash-lands on Earth. With Ridley Scott's original vision as its foundation, the series expands the lore with new characters, high-stakes drama, and a layered exploration of artificial intelligence. The cast also includes Sydney Chandler as Wendy, Alex Lawther as CJ, Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh, Babou Ceesay as Morrow, Samuel Blenkin as Boy Kavalier, Jonathan Ajayi as Smee, Lily Newmark as Nibs, Kit Young as Tootles, Sandra Yi Sencindiver as Yutani, Adrian Edmondson as Atom Eins and David Rysdahl as Arthur Sylvia. Premiering on August 12, 2025, 'Alien: Earth' is an eight-part series episodes airing every Tuesday. The season finale is slated for September 23, 2025.
The Guardian
08-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Alien is a warning, isn't it?': Essie Davis on Alien: Earth and Tasmania's ecological crisis
Essie Davis didn't watch much horror growing up in Tasmania; the 55-year-old actor can still bitterly recall the moment when, aged four, she was left at home while her older siblings went to see Jaws at the local cinema in Hobart. 'I stood by the back door going, 'I will remember this day for the rest of my life!'' Davis recalls, speaking from her current family home, also in Tasmania. She finally saw the film on VHS years later, while dating a production designer she had met while performing at Belvoir St theatre. That designer was Justin Kurzel, now one of Australia's most celebrated directors – and also her husband. Back in the mid-90s, Kurzel's courtship rituals included a crash course in horror classics – Jaws was high on the list, followed closely by Ridley Scott's 1979 space slasher Alien. 'I love that first Alien film so much, I wish I'd seen it in a cinema,' Davis says. 'They're definitely a huge part of my film psyche.' It would take another few decades before Davis entered the Alien universe herself, in a new prequel series set shortly before the original film. Alien: Earth focuses on Wendy (Sydney Chandler), a 'forever girl' whose consciousness is transferred from her terminally ill human body to a synthetic one, making her a world-first 'hybrid'. Davis plays Dame Sylvia, one of the scientists responsible for Wendy's second life. In one of many allusions to Peter Pan, Hawley named the character after Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, the real-life mother of the boys who inspired JM Barrie to write his Neverland saga. The show's themes – and Sylvia's attempts to balance Wendy's humanity with her new, artificial immortality – felt particularly timely to Davis. 'AI was a thing that was coming, but it wasn't suddenly upon us,' she says. 'And then we had the writers' strike and the actors' strike, and then ChatGPT suddenly was in the schools in Tasmania, and I was just going, 'hang on a minute'. 'There's a tightrope of ethics and morality, and everyone has a different version of it. I really hope that people will enjoy this and get hooked into that quandary of genetic engineering and ethics and that strange quest to own everything and beat everyone and be younger than anyone.' Davis is a horror icon herself, thanks to a breakout role in Jennifer Kent's 2014 film The Babadook. The low-budget Australian production became a global hit, with fans including The Exorcist director William Friedkin, who placed the film alongside Alien as one of the scariest films he had ever seen. It remains a modern cult classic 10 years later. 'I remember watching a screening way before it was released, and just went, 'Oh, this is great, but it's not scary',' she says. 'And then we went to the Sundance film festival, and I sat up the back as people swore and leapt out of their seats.' Davis credits the film's enduring appeal – its top-hatted spook has even been embraced as an unlikely Queer icon – to something deeper than jump scares. 'It's not just a horror film,' she says. 'It's in fact a kind of psychological thriller about mental health and grief and parenting and love.' It remains a defining role for Davis, alongside her star turn in Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries – the 1920s detective franchise that ran for three series and a film, based on the novels of Kerry Greenwood, who died in April. 'A terrible loss, but she's forever in us now,' says Davis. 'I was crying, working out whether I should do it or not,' she adds, of donning Phryne Fisher's signature black bob. 'I'm really glad I did, because that character was such a positive force, and it's just so fun to play someone so clever and positive and naughty and irreverent – and someone who really cares about social justice, and is not going to bow for anyone, and stands up for the underdog.' Along with roles in Game of Thrones, Baby Teeth and Netflix's One Day, Davis has also collaborated with her film-maker husband, responsible for films including Snowtown, Nitram, and television adaptations of Peter Carey's The True History of the Kelly Gang and most recently Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Davis appeared in the latter three. Their kids were old enough to be watching Alien for a high school English class when the script for Alien: Earth hit Davis's inbox; the series is led by Noah Hawley, the showrunner behind the award-winning small-screen adaptation of Fargo. She was intrigued; the show's depiction of a future Earth carved up and controlled by mega-corporations – Dame Sylvia is employed by Prodigy, a rival to the franchise's longstanding faceless villains, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation – particularly resonated with her. 'It's terribly prescient – the richest of corporations and the richest people taking over the world, essentially running the world,' she says. For Davis, the perils of corporate profits have been plain to see from her home in Tasmania, where she and Kurzel returned to raise their family. 'It is terrifying what is happening to our beautiful place here in Tassie, and the total corporate capture of our government by big industry,' she says of the controversy around the state's fish farming industry, of which she has become one of many high-profile critics, alongside Richard Flanagan and former ABC journalist turned political candidate Peter George. These days, Davis doesn't have to go to the cinema to witness coastal dread. 'When you look out over the water from Bruny Island, everywhere you look you see rows and rows of fish pens, and huge, industrial factory ships,' she says. 'We had mass fish mortalities, rotting salmon washing up on our beaches. And 53 cormorants got shot because they were fishing out of the pens.' Davis says the public opposition to such practices 'began as lots of individuals around Tasmania making constructive criticism, and asking for a bit of negotiation on pollution'. It was being ignored by salmon companies and successive governments, she says, that connected and galvanised the far-flung island community. What began as a movement, Davis says, has now become an 'insurrection', evident in the rise of Peter George, who was elected to Tasmania's state parliament as an independent days after our interview. 'But we're not going to stop,' she says. 'We're just going to keep on until we have people representing the people of Tasmania and not just corporations and party politics. 'I guess Alien is a warning, isn't it?' she adds. 'A warning of what greed and money and this kind of pursuit of immortality can do to a planet.' Alien: Earth launches on Disney+ on 12 August in Australia and the US and on 13 August in the UK
