This week brand new, ambitious Disney+ series Alien: Earth makes its global debut. The series, masterminded by Noah Hawley, debuts with a two-episode premiere on August 13, 2025. Ahead of its launch we sat down with cast members Samuel Blenkin who plays Boy Kavalier and Babou Ceesay who plays Morrow. Over the next few days in the run up to the premiere we’ll be sharing what they had to say about joining this legendary franchise.
When the mysterious deep space research vessel USCSS Maginot crash-lands on Earth, “Wendy” (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat in FX’s “Alien: Earth.”
You can watch our full chat with both actors in the player below and scroll down for transcription.
NB: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Neil Vagg (GYCO): The Alien fanbase is just so notoriously passionate and rabid. What do you hope the long time fans will appreciate about this new take? And going back to the beginning, as it were?
Samuel Blenkin: I think that, to me what makes great TV is when it’s a singular vision. I think Noah Hawley has a track record of taking IP like this and turning them into great stories, but that can be made only in the way that he makes them. I think that that’s one of the key ingredients to making great art. So, you know, when I heard that he was doing the series I didn’t know what that would look like. I know what Alien looks like. I know what the creatures feel like. I know what that iconic film did to me when I watched it when I was really young. But the exciting thing for me is seeing somebody with a very specific vision for the way that they tell stories combine that with such an influential universe. So I think that that’s what they’ll appreciate is the combination of those two things creating something new.
Babou Ceesay: I think sometimes it’s easy to forget that we’re fans. So in a way that was what it was like on set. It wasn’t lost on anybody where we were in what we were doing. It was hard to not get lost because there’s an eight foot Xenomorph standing in the corner and so it’s made for the fans by the fans. We just hoping we’ve done enough. This franchise belongs to the fans. We’ve just come from Comic-Con in San Diego and the passion, the love. We watched the first episode in Hall H with 6,400 people. It was emotional.
GYCO: I feel like whenever Boy Kavalier walks in to a scene he’s the biggest mind in the room as well as the biggest ego. But he’s also unpredictable. I watch those scenes and I’m on the edge of my seat thinking I don’t actually know what he’s going to do next.
So much of how his emotions and his actions are communicated through your facial expressions and I was wondering did you do much experimentation between seeing the character on the page and first getting on set to try and figure out exactly how emotive you could be and how big you could take the performance?
SB: I’d like to say that I did do preparation, but I’d be lying [laughs]. No, I’m joking. I mentioned earlier about outside in and it’s a really interesting thing for me. One thing that I love [is] when you’re watching any kind of screen work and an actor takes a big swing. That’s just personally for me, something that I love because you know there’s a beautiful intimacy with the camera.
Obviously the camera loves interiority and is drawn to interiority. But I just love it when people take a big swing. So I read this character and saw an opportunity to play somebody who, if I could make it also grounded and real, you know, would be able to genuinely take those things. A lot of things came live like holding things with my feet or [how I was] sitting in chairs. Certain ways or getting on tables in certain ways. You know, I didn’t plan those things before the scene. They were things that came up because I felt like there was a sense of freedom and sense of play on, on set.
Sometimes you, as an actor, have to bring all of that yourself and it could sort of impose. I’m carving out space for me to do my work. But on this set, it was like, what I’m going to do next and I felt really honoured. I felt that was just I felt so trusted.
GYCO: We haven’t seen much of your characters interact from screen yet in the episodes we have seen. I don’t know what happened in the last two episodes but there is this wonderful scene in episode six where finally see them in the room together. But given both represent really different aspects of humanity’s relationship with technology. What do you think these characters kind of make of each other?
SB: I can answer that easily. I see this character as a pain in the ass, an absolute pain in my bum. I wish he wasn’t as annoying as he is. Speaking just as Boy K [laughs].
BC: The interesting thing about Morrow is I think he has a lot of humanity. II think that’s very much a big part of him and a sense of moral responsibility as well. Even though he does some questionable things. I think someone like boy K represents that dread we all feel for Morrow. In terms of all of us, that we feel certain people in those positions, the power they have to influence our lives. You know, we’re not sure how much influence they have over our governments. So I think there’s an element of moral needing to be the tool to try and do something about [Boy Kavalier].
In the year 2120, the Earth is governed by five corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic and Threshold. In this Corporate Era, cyborgs (humans with both biological and artificial parts) and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence) exist alongside humans. But the game is changed when the wunderkind Founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation unlocks a new technological advancement: hybrids (humanoid robots infused with human consciousness). The first hybrid prototype named “Wendy” marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. After Weyland-Yutani’s spaceship collides into Prodigy City, “Wendy” and the other hybrids encounter mysterious life forms more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined.
Led by Chandler, the series showcases an expansive international cast, which includes Timothy Olyphant (“Kirsh”), Alex Lawther (“Hermit”), Samuel Blenkin (“Boy Kavalier”), Babou Ceesay (“Morrow”), Adrian Edmondson (“Atom Eins”), David Rysdahl (“Arthur Sylvia”), Essie Davis (“Dame Sylvia”), Lily Newmark (“Nibs”), Erana James (“Curly”), Adarsh Gourav (“Slightly”), Jonathan Ajayi (“Smee”), Kit Young (“Tootles”), Diêm Camille (“Siberian”), Moe Bar-El (“Rashidi”) and Sandra Yi Sencindiver (“Yutani”).
FX’s Alien: Earth is created for television and executive produced by Peabody and Emmy® Award-winning Noah Hawley. Ridley Scott, David W. Zucker, Joseph Iberti, Dana Gonzales and Clayton Krueger also serve as executive producers. “Alien: Earth” is produced by FX Productions.
