Noah Hawley on ‘Alien: Earth,’ Sydney Chandler and making art in Texas

Noah Hawley likes to play in the worlds of some of his favorite directors. “Fargo,” based on the 1996 film by the Coen brothers, turned into a hit five-season TV series in Hawley’s hands. Now, he’s doing the same with Ridley Scott’s “Alien.”

“Alien: Earth” is available on Hulu and FX and, a few episodes in, fans and critics are similarly impressed. Noah Hawley stopped by the Texas Standard studio to talk about his latest work. Listen in the player above, watch the video of the interview or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard: You are just down the road now. You moved your production company, 26 Keys, to Austin recently.

Noah Hawley: Yeah, and I can see the Capitol from my window – which feels a little subversive, making art that close to the Capitol.

Austin was a place that you wanted to base not just your production company, but your family, your life. Why?

Yeah, I’ve lived here for over 15 years and have raised my kids here and, you know, I was getting on a plane every other week to go to L.A. for a long time. And then, you now, after we all were locked down and released, no one seemed to want to meet in person anymore. And so it became easier to move everything here and just work from here.

And a big part of what we’re trying to do at 26 Keys is to really connect with our community. I’m on the board of advisers of the Harry Ransom Center at UT, and my wife, Kyle, is on the board of the Texas Book Festival, and I’m on the AFS [Austin Film Society] board, and we really want to be connectors in our community between journalism and education, and the arts. So it’s been great.

The day we opened the doors, I had an “Alien” writers’ room going. I had all kinds of things, editors in, and it’s been nonstop.

You had huge success with “Fargo,” and you’re now bringing “Alien” for the first time to the world of TV. What is it about the episodic nature of TV that makes storytelling exciting for you?

Well, it’s long-form storytelling, so you have more time to really explore theme and character.

And, you know, what’s interesting is that a TV series has a beginning, middle and an end, and a TV season has a beginning, middle and an ending, and every episode also has to have that structure to it as well, and, within that, the sort of microcosms and the fractals of storytelling, I feel like I can really do something interesting and unexpected by telling stories that surprise people.

You know, I’ve watched a lot of great TV in my life, and there’s always those moments where you go, “I can’t believe the character just did that.” And what I was hoping for is to create shows where the audience goes, “I cannot believe the show just did it.”

I love the “Alien” films, particularly the first two. And I imagine you’re a fan, too. What do you love about them?

Well, what I love, I mean, the first one is maybe the best horror movie ever made, and the second maybe the most action movie ever. So that’s an incredible gambit that you have between those two movies, both of those genres, between Ridley and James Cameron.

And what I loved about that first movie is that it’s a blue-collar space trucker movie that starts with none of the normal dread of a horror movie. It’s literally just like these space truckers waking up and smoking over their breakfast and complaining about their pay. And for like 40 minutes you’re watching this slice of life from this blue-collar story, and then of course it becomes this horror movie.

And the second movie also – it’s these grunts, it’s working men and women, and that was such a ’70s thing I felt like that class consciousness made it exciting for me to revisit.

Sigourney Weaver’s character Ripley is so great, such a powerful female. Can you tell me about your lead character, Wendy?

Yeah, I mean, Sydney Chandler plays Wendy, and Sydney is Kyle Chandler’s daughter. Of course, who we all know Kyle here. Coach Taylor.

I don’t think I put that together – another Austinite.  She’s got such great eyes, and I should have, because the brown eyes.

Yeah, she’s got those big eyes. And you know, she’s young actor, and when I was casting for this role I was shooting “Fargo” season five up in Calgary, and she put herself on a plane and she flew up. And she had an offer in hand for a big movie, but she wanted to do this.

She’s a sci-fi nerd, and she wanted this role, and that effort was meaningful to me, that she wanted it that badly to come up.

And it’s hard to define what a star quality is, but you know it when you see it, and you find it when you put a camera three inches from someone’s face and you can see every thought and every feeling that they’re having. And there’s something so charismatic and compelling about her.

The story is about these children whose minds have been put into these synthetic bodies as a sort of first play toward immortality. And so she’s playing a 12-year-old girl in an adult woman’s body, and she had to find that inner child and then bring that sense of play, but also that nobility that our children have and the earnestness, right?

Who’s more human than a child? They don’t pretend they’re not scared; they’re bad liars, right?

And they look at the world and they go, “well, why are those people sleeping on the street?” And as adults we go, “well, you just have to get used to it. It’s complicated.” And they’re like, “do we have to get used it?” You know, so they have this simple morality that I think is really important in a story that’s sort of exploring human greed and technology, et cetera.

Sydney Chandler as Wendy in FX’s ‘Alien: Earth.’
CR: Patrick Brown / FX

I’m so glad you brought up that sense of playfulness because that was the word that I was going to use. Despite how dark and scary – I mean it’s still “Alien” and there’s still lots of that – but Wendy gets her name from the Peter Pan story, and she, as you said, leads this group of young people who had their minds and memories moved to these adult humanoid robot bodies.

Can you talk about finding the fun? A lot has also been made of some “Ice Age” references that come in.

Yeah, I mean, it’s again, making them children, it opens up a world of playfulness to me, but it’s also when I look at the original material, you mentioned James Cameron’s film. He has this character, Newt, who’s a young girl, but who’s actually really wise. She’s sort of an adult in a child’s body. And then you have Bill Paxton, who may be the most childish adult ever in movies, “Game Over Man,” right?

And so when I was looking, “is there a comp?” I thought, “oh, well that tone of voice is there because you have this childish adult and you have this wise child.”

So I’m always looking to make a sort of metaphorical translation, not a literal translation, of elements from these original films that made you feel something, and then I’m trying to create those same feelings by doing something totally different.

I’m not going to talk about the cat because Jonesy is also one of my favorites. But we just won’t go there. We’ll leave that for viewers.

So – part of the setup is this worldwide rivalry of five corporations. Countries aren’t a thing anymore. It’s just basically these tech groups, right? Do you think that could someday be a reality?

Yeah, I mean, the show is set a hundred years in the future, and I just tried to think one or two steps ahead.

Is it realistic to think that billionaires will become trillionaires? Yeah, you could kind of see that. Is it realist to think these corporations will merge and acquire each other and grow? And they do tend toward monopoly, and they are amassing more power and more wealth.

You know, it doesn’t seem unrealistic. You know, and in order to protect their businesses, that they’re going to have to take over some power to make sure that the world is a more predictable and orderly place.

So that was my move – I want you to look at the show set in the future and have it feel relevant to the world today. You know, what Ridley and James Cameron were dealing with was these individuals versus the nameless, faceless corporations, but of course, our corporations aren’t nameless and faceless anymore. They have these celebrity nerds at the heads of them, right?

And we know all of them by name. We got Mark and we got Elon and we got Jeff and all these guys. And so this show had to reflect this current reality versus this more George Orwellian reality of the ’70s.

FX’s ‘Alien: Earth’ – ‘Neverland’ – Season 1, Episode 1: Samuel Blenkin as Boy Kavalier (C), Ade Edmondson as Atom Eins (R). CR: Patrick Brown/FX

I have to ask about one of the corporation names, because you’re such a movie head. Was Lynch a nod at all to the late, great filmmaker David Lynch?

I mean, you know, what an icon that guy is. You know, the words have a feeling to them. And for whatever reason, as I was naming these corporations, you know it’s both a great filmmaker and a threat. You know, it’s a dangerous word.

Like a linchpin or something?

Yeah, or the worst version of it, you know, it has a dynamic to it where it feels like, you know there’s a company called Dynamic and you’re like, well that sounds nice, right? But it’s also what does that mean, these gentle sounding companies with big ambitions.

I’d love to ask you so much more, but I don’t want to get into spoilers at all. I did notice that you make a couple of little cameos in the first episodes. What was behind the decision for you to get in front of the camera, and what was that like?

Well, you know, as an artist, whether it’s common or not, I’m always trying to match maximum creativity with maximum efficiency. I like getting things right the first time, if I can. It’s what allows me to be so productive.

And my son, Lev, who’s 12, was 10 at the time. He asked if there was some part that he could play. We were filming over in Bangkok, and they were over for the summer. And he wasn’t right for any of the Lost Boys, but I thought that the young Hermit, Alex Lawther’s character, who plays Sydney’s brother, I thought he could be right for that.

And I wasn’t planning to write scenes for it. We were just going to do a day-of sort of improv-y, you know, family. We see the young boy and the baby girl that grows up to be Wendy and the father and the mother.

And so what happened was he wanted to be in it, and I thought, “okay, well, there’s no script, so I’m just going I’m going to have to find a day player. To find the father, and then I’m gonna be behind the camera trying to get a performance out of my son the first time he’s ever done it.”

And I thought, “well, the best thing is if I just get down on the floor and do it with him.” And so that was what was behind it.

But you know, what’s really meaningful about it, of course, now is that it’s two years later and my son is six inches taller, right? It really captured a moment in time. And there was something nice about being the father of the main characters in my own story.

But I don’t plan on writing myself a big part in season two.

Well, speaking of season two, I’m speeding ahead a little bit. Each season of “Fargo” was unique, following different characters and storylines in the world. Can you say yet whether the same will be true for “Alien: Earth,” or will it be following Wendy and sticking with her journey?

Yeah, it’s a recurring story, so these characters that you’re investing in now will carry the show forward to its conclusion, however many seasons that takes.

I don’t have a lot of experience doing that. It’s great to do the anthology format and reinvent it every time, but there’s also real value to … I love those shows that last five or seven seasons and every year you can’t wait what’s going to happen next and people have a unique relationship with television that’s different than the movies.

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