Sigourney Weaver On ‘Alien: Earth’: “I Can’t Believe It’s Television”

Sigourney Weaver is weighing in on the latest entry to the Alien franchise, which she helped start with the 1979 Ridley Scott-directed film.

Alien: Earth premiered last month, and it’s already getting a lot of praise, including from Ripley herself.

During a recent interview at TIFF while promoting Dust Bunny, Weaver gave her take on the FX series set in the not-too-distant future.

“What I admire about it is it’s not Alien-centric. It is about what world we will be living in in 100 years,” she told Collider. “I think the scope of it is so much bigger than an Alien project. Fascinating. Much more about our world, what’s going to be happening to it, what’s going to be important, the role of greed.”

She continued, “It’s just exploded some of the themes that have always been part of the Alien series, and I think it’s beautifully cast and beautifully done. I can’t believe it’s television, frankly.”

Alien: Earth takes place in the year 2120, when 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” (Sydney Chandler) 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.

Alien: Earth was created by Noah Hawley and stars Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Essie Davis, Samuel Blenkin, Babou Ceesay, Adarsh Gourav, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Jonathan Ajayi, David Rysdahl, Diêm Camille, Moe Bar-El, Adrian Edmondson, and Timothy Olyphant.