Alien: Earth has been a revelation. A show which arguably delivers on the promise of Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien film in a way only the immediate sequel, Aliens, managed. In fact the Disney+ show is a prequel to the original, set just before the events on the Nostromo, and follows closely to its gritty design and disturbing tone while also expanding the universe.
In brief, it establishes a future Earth where democracy has disappeared and five organisations rule the world, including Weyland-Yutani, the nefarious Company who prioritised capturing xenomorphs over crew members in the films, and a one called the Prodigy Corporation, led by a young genius with a Peter Pan obsession called Boy Kavalier. These companies are competing in AI and military tech, with Kavalier having invented Hybrids, where dying children are ‘saved’ by having their minds transferred into ‘synthetics’, the robots who we know from the films are “a bit twitchy.” These Hybrids play a key role as a spaceship crashes down to earth full of Alien species – a xenomorph plus some other horrible creatures - which the Companies want for their own ends.
Now, to Babou Ceesay. You may be aware of his work, and if you saw the show Wolfe on Sky, you will certainly be aware that he possesses a Philip Seymour Hoffman-esque charisma to him, an emotional intensity belied by a comic touch. London-born but now living in Gambia, in Alien: Earth he plays Morrow, where the emotional intensity is dialled up to the max.
Ceesay tells us, “[Creator/writer] Noah Hawley gave me some nuggets about the character and one of the best was: ‘No one invited him to a party, ever.’”
Morrow is a Company man for Weyland-Yutani, ordered to bring back the xenomorph from the hands of Prodigy, which he does by manipulating one of the naïve Hybrid kids. He’s the villain. Or is he?
“One of the biggest things about him is that for the first couple of episodes, people think he’s a synth… he’s the ‘villain’. But the reality is that he’s so complex it’s not that simple. He does villainous things, that really are awful. But I’ve been finding people have started to love the guy. And then to have this new episode which contextualises some of his behaviour was a gift.”
Ah yes. The reason why we’re speaking to Ceesay now is because the series has reached a pivotal moment. Episode 5 is a killer standalone – don’t we all love those – which fills in the blanks from the first episode and operates as a fan-pleasing throwback which is so close to the original’s aesthetics that it feels almost like undiscovered footage from Ridley Scott’s archives.
To fill in some blanks.
Alien: Earth opened aboard a science vessel similar to the Nostromo, the ship which Ripley (and Jones the cat) barely escaped from in the original. And similar too in that a xenomorph was in the process of tearing apart the crew.
Morrow was onboard, apparently engineering his own survival, as well as the alien’s; much as Ash (played unforgettably by Ian Holm) the ‘synthetic’ did in the film. Morrow steered the stricken ship into a crash-landing back on Earth, seemingly to allow the Weyland-Yutari to get their hands on some sweet Xeno biological weaponry. Yet, as with the entire series, nothing with Morrow is as it seems. There is context. We learn in flashbacks he had a daughter. And hear mention of a childhood on the streets. And despite his robotic arm, we see him bleed red, not synthetic white.
“I went through the character layer by layer, and really tried to understand all the different things that were at play like the loss of his daughter. His sense of duty and maybe to some extent love towards [Company head] Utani because she took him off the streets. I looked at what got him on the streets, that abandonment element. I thought about his relationship with his mother. And how did he end up in a relationship where he even has a kid?”
All of which makes Morrow one of the most satisfying characters in the series. Yet despite the heavy presence Ceesay brings – very reminiscent to how Holm and John Hurt lent weight to the original – he had an absolute ball being part of it. In fact, Ceesay was an Alien fan ever since he stayed up late to watch it as a kid, and “the chest burst moment was etched in my mind forever.”
When the role came up, he at first dismissed it as being out of his league, “for someone super-famous,” but then read the scene he had been given, realised how phenomenal it was, and pulled himself together to “take a shot.” He was away filming in Greece at the time, and locked himself away to work on it. After a lot of agony waiting to hear – “I didn’t leave my apartment for three days, just walking around it” – he bagged his dream and ended up on the huge $250 million production in Thailand, walking around physical sets uncannily like the films.
“We were told not to take any videos,” he says, “Yeah… I took loads. They just gave up stopping me in the end. Like, of course I’m going to capture this moment. I’m walking into history! What am I going to do?”
Filming the standalone was a particular delight as they were literally echoing classic scenes from the first film, including the dinner scene.
“That dining scene where we're all sat in the mess. Everybody was giddy. The director's walking in going, ‘Oh my goodness, let's just try our best.’ You couldn't even afford to think about because that scene in that original film really stands out. It’s unexpected, on a ship out in the middle of space, the people are still people, sitting around talking, having a cigarette, bickering, hitting each other. To have the opportunity to go back in there…
“And the wonderful thing was, if you walked towards a door, it opened. If you press something, it clicks. In all the food areas, there's real food. just thinking about it just gives me goosebumps.”
The episode follows through on the promise, and is its own mini-classic. Without giving away any spoilers, it turns the series on its head with Morrow’s story, and with revelations around Kavalier’s role in all this.
You understand that Morrow is a man, dealing with trauma, who has it in for Kavalier not because he’s head of a rival firm but because he’s more of a villain than even the xenomorph. Tech company power is just one of the big contemporary themes the series tackles.
“I think we can all relate on some level that the world seems to be getting harder to manage, and we're sort of asking a question of who's rigging it, because it's untenable.
“Going back to Alien in 1979, that was during Margaret Thatcher's time. What was happening? She was dismantling the unions, things were changing. So the idea of big corporations was already seeded in that original. love that Noah has come back and really pulled out that big corporate element.”
Yet it is a monster series too, and Ceesay did have some scenes with the alien. Just as Sydney Chandler told us, there didn’t need to be much acting when it came to showing fear.
“My first interaction with the xenomorph was in the screen test where he had this moment where the Xeno leans into me. It's Cameron [who plays the character] in a suit and you're thinking, yeah, what do I do? I guess I put my gun up at it's jaw and blah blah, I'm ready.
“And then the moment comes and this thing leans in and you see that big shimmering dome reaching out and the teeth starting to bare, that extra mouth comes out…instantly I started feeling the fear running up and down my spine. I’m like, that’s interesting. No acting required. My reptilian brain wants out of this situation. I know this is cool, but something in me thinks this isn't cool. I thought that's fantastic.
“We had so many practical effects. You're running through a door and then you've got to shut it behind you when something's coming towards you!”
Ceesay will no doubt win many plaudits – and awards – for playing Morrow in the coming months. But acting is just one part of his life. He moved his family from London to Gambia before the pandemic in order to help kickstart the film industry over there, and has now found himself of everything from major productions like a documentary with Martin Scorsese and the late Pope Francis, to building new cinemas. He says, “We have one annual event - the Khoros Film Festival, that happens the last weekend in November every year. We are on our third edition this year. As part of that we are building capacity by offering industry standard training AND producing content through Studio 71, my production company.
“The long term vision is to be part of a thriving pan-African film industry.”
Quite a guy, with a lot of work on. But firstly he has to deal with fan reaction to this new episode, since he has recently, somewhat reluctantly, returned to social media.
“I have not been on social media for 4 years. We're doing a lot of publicity and I wouldn't say I was pressured to joining, but I definitely got a sense that joining had its advantages and it would be useful. So in the end I, I thought, OK, let me join. Now I have been getting DMs from all over the world.
“So I am both nervous and excited about this coming episode. I'm hoping it lands.”
