Alien queen
Australian star Essie Davis does her best to avoid spoilers as she speaks to DQ about her part in Alien: Earth, the ethical battles facing her character’s role in changing the face of humanity and why being on set was like visiting Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.
When Essie Davis received an offer to audition for a new TV series called Alien, the Australian actor didn’t need to be asked twice before signing up. Such was her love of the original film franchise that she jumped at the opportunity, even though at that point she didn’t even know much about the central storyline or how her character, Dame Sylvia, might be involved.
“I wasn’t told I would meet aliens, and I wasn’t told if I would go into space,” she tells DQ. “You’re signing on and hoping. There was definitely an allure of what the character was potentially going to be and do and become, but you just sign and cross your fingers, thinking, ‘This better be worth it.’”
Between her love of 1979’s Alien and its 1986 sequel Aliens, the world of the films, and her own high expectations, Davis was then “extremely relieved” when she watched the finished first episode of the eight-part series, titled Alien: Earth, and found it had exceeded her hopes for the show.
“You never know when you say yes to something [if it will be a success]. You work your damnedest,” she says. “Clearly all of the elements were extremely good ingredients, but to actually see it, I was quite blown away. I was really impressed at the world they’d created.”
Created by Noah Hawley (Fargo), and with Alien director Ridley Scott among the executive producers, the show opens in the year 2120, when the world is governed by five mega corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic and Threshold. It’s also a time when humans exist alongside cyborgs (humans with biological and artificial parts) and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence).
Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), the Wunderkind founder and CEO of Prodigy, unlocks a new technological advancement to create ‘hybrids’ by transplanting the human consciousnesses of terminally ill children into humanoid robots. The first hybrid prototype, Wendy (Sydney Chandler), marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. But when Weyland-Yutani’s mysterious deep-space research vessel USCSS Maginot crash-lands in Prodigy City on Earth, Wendy and the other hybrids discover numerous life forms on board more terrifying than anyone could have imagined.
The cast also includes Alex Lawther as Hermit, Wendy’s human brother and a tactical officer and medic who is among the first at the scene of the Maginot crash site; Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh, a synthetic responsible for the first group of hybrids; Babou Ceesay as Morrow, the Maginot’s chief security officer, and David Rysdahl as Arthur Sylvia, Dame Sylvia’s husband.
Davis’s character Dame Sylvia appears in episode one to oversee the hybrid creation process, supporting the young children as their consciousness passes to their new robotic body.
“She’s probably the highest-level female in this world, apart from Yutani [Sandra Yi Sencindiver], at the head of one of these companies,” the actor explains. “She’s a super-smart scientist. She is co-creator of these creations, and she’s nurturing because she wants these humans to grow up well in their bodies and be amazing. She’s the mother figure.
“But she’s got where she’s got because she, amazingly, is still a woman in a man’s world – a brat’s world,” she says, noting her role within the impetuous Boy Kavalier’s regime. “But she’s known him since he was 10. She’s got some ethical things to consider, definitely. But she’s a total frontrunner in her field and financed by a wayward child who’s a genius, obviously, but has also employed extremely intelligent people to work with him.”
She adds: “He’s never had a childhood. He’s been a genius with a multibillion-dollar company since he was a child, so he never got to be a child. It’s a battle with the person who facilitates you creating your dreams to come true and has all power over them.”
Much more than that, Davis cannot say. Just like the franchise’s feared and famed Xenomorphs, potential spoilers lurk around every corner when discussing Alien: Earth. “Noah is one of those mysterious, creative people who can just leapfrog into another world. We could leapfrog out of Prodigy and end up in Weyland-Yutani, or who knows? It’s all kind of connected, so anything can happen. Who knows?,” she laughs.
To prepare for her role, Davis read up on AI and women in high-ranking scientific roles. She would then get together with the cast in their hotel rooms on location in Bangkok for readthroughs of each script, in the hope of piecing together the bigger themes and storylines that run through the series. Davis also got to meet the show’s resident Xenomorph – off set, at least – in the shape of stunt performer Cameron Brown.
“We did spend a lot of time just hanging out together when we could,” she says. “There were definitely different worlds going on [within the show], particularly the [Maginot] crew on that ship. That was definitely a different world, but they’re still in the makeup chairs, and there was a lot of filming at the same time. There were days when I was going, ‘I want to go into the set with the big eggs in it. That’s the cool set. Oh, I’m going in the grey room again.’”
After signing on for the role of Sylvia, Davis received all the scripts, but only a handful of weeks on set could be completed before the US writers and actors strikes dominated the second half of 2023. Some filming did continue with a few of the British actors on the cast, but it meant reshaping much of the shooting schedule and bringing forward various set builds.
Then when full production resumed for a further six months in 2024, “we were shooting completely out of order,” Davis recalls. “So I started with episode two or three, and then it was all over the place. Then about halfway through that, we got another set of scripts where the story changed. Things were withheld from the story that hopefully will come later on [in potential further seasons].”
Davis wasn’t the only Alien fan among the cast and crew, and she compares being on set to Charlie’s first visit to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. The show’s focus on practical sets – even replicating design elements of Alien’s Nostromo on board the Maginot – also put Alien: Earth’s heritage in sharp focus.
“We were all just so excited,” Davis says. “There were three studios in Bangkok, and multiple soundstages. Before we started shooting, we went out to the Maginot ship set and all walked through it, and we were like Charlie in the chocolate factory – a bunch of kids walking into the little escape shuttle bit that Morrow gets in [in episode one] and sitting in the pilot seats. That was really fun.”
Across a 30-year screen career that has seen her take up a variety of roles, Tasmania-based Davis might best be known for playing Phryne Fisher in Australian period drama series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, grief-stricken single mother Amelia Vanek in cult horror film The Babadook or Lady Crane, a member of a travelling theatre company in Game of Thrones.
Recent roles have also included One Day, Apple Cider Vinegar and The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a Second World War drama directed by her husband Justin Kurzel. “I feel like I’ve had some really important cult movies and inspirational TV role models,” she says, “and I still get to keep reinventing once I get a bit bored being the same thing. I like exploring.”
In fact, she says Alien: Earth is most similar to Game of Thrones in terms of the scale of the production, with numerous units filming simultaneously across grand sets.
“[Game of Thrones] was also multiple directors working at the same time in multiple studios on multiple storylines,” she says. “So it did have a huge machine that is working and you’re only seeing one part of it going around. Suttirat Anne Larlarb, our costume designer [on Alien: Earth], was still designing costumes in the final week, so lots of new characters [were appearing]. It was a big, changing world that everyone worked so hard on, relentless hours. The crew were fantastic.”
But Davis doesn’t believe audiences need to have seen the original Alien films to “appreciate” the series, which launches today, with the first two episodes on Disney+ internationally after its premiere on Hulu in the US yesterday.
“Who knows what we’re about to see?” she jokes, still avoiding spoilers, “but it’s quite similar to the world we’re currently living in, where companies are far more important than people on the street, the world’s in ruins, climate change has totally taken over and greed is dangerous. There’s also this crazy, never-ending pursuit of youth and immortality.”
She ultimately hopes viewers find Alien: Earth just as thrilling and exciting – and scary – as the cast found making the show. “There are so many new elements that aren’t in the films, because it is eight hours’ worth of story, and there’s just no way we can all be running down corridors for eight hours,” she says. “So there’s lots of, ‘Where is the danger coming from? Who can you trust? Who is the real monster?’ And things go wrong.”
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
Halo: Based on the Xbox video game franchise, this show sees humanity fighting for survival against the alien Covenant in a sci-fi war across the galaxy.
3 Body Problem: Decades of scientific mystery lead to a first-contact crisis as humanity faces an existential threat from an alien civilisation determined to reshape Earth.
Invasion: Multiple lives across the globe are upended as mysterious aliens arrive and humanity’s existence hangs in the balance.
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