Is Noah Hawley’s Alien TV series just Fargo with Xenomorphs? After adding Timothy Olyphant, who appeared on season 4 of the anthology series, FX’s Alien has cast another Fargo star in an undisclosed role: David Rysdahl. The Oppenheimer and No Exit actor joins a cast that includes Sydney Chandler (Don’t Worry Darling) as Wendy, a meta-human; Alex Lawther (Star Wars: Andor) as CJ, a soldier; Samuel Blenkin (The Sandman) as Boy Kavalier, a CEO; and Essie Davis (Game of Thrones) as Dame Silvia, Adarsh Gourav (The White Tiger) as Slightly, and Kit Young (Shadow and Bone) as Tootles. Deadline first reported the news.
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Details about Rysdahl’s character are under wraps. It was reported that Olyphant is playing a “major” role as Kirsh, described as “a synth who acts as a mentor and trainer” for Chandler’s Wendy, “a hybrid meta-human who has the brain and consciousness of a child but the body of an adult.”
Little is known about the Alien prequel executive produced by Ridley Scott except that it’s set on Earth decades before the Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) era of Alien, Aliens, and Alien 3.
“Alien takes place before Ripley,” FX chief John Landgraf said during the 2022 Television Critics Association press tour. “It’s the first story in the Alienfranchise that takes place on Earth. It takes place on our planet, nearthe end of this century we’re currently in — 70-odd years from now. All I can tell you is Ripley won’t be a part of it, and neither willany other characters — other than the alien itself.”
Landgraf added that Hawley, who created FX’s Fargo series now in its fifth season, “hasan incredible ability to both find a way of being faithful and showingfidelity to an original creation, like to the Coen brothers [with Fargo] or to Ridley Scott’s [Alien] movie and James Cameron’s follow-up Aliens, butalso to bring something new that represents both an extension andreinvention of a franchise at the same time. He’s done a masterful jobwith Alien as he did with Fargo. There are some big surprises in store for the audience.”
Though decades removed from the original 1979 Alien and Scott’s semi-prequel/spinoff Prometheus and its sequel Alien: Covenant, Hawley’s Alien series is what Landgraf hopes fans embrace as “faithfulto the franchise they love but also a brave and original reinvention ofthat franchise.”
“Setting it on Earth is reallyinteresting,” Landgraf added. “We have to think forward about the future of the planet interms of the environment, governance, technology and create and design aversion of the planet in the future … Noah wants to do that in adistinctive and original way.”
Alien does not yet have a premiere date on FX on Hulu.
