Alien:Earth star Alex Lawther: "There were 1,600 local crew alone living and working in what essentially became this small town"

Given that he spent a sizable chunk of 2024 shooting a sci-fi epic in Thailand and is currently working on a major project in Vancouver with Hot Press’ old pal Anthony Boyle, it’s rather touching that globetrotting A-List actor Alex Lawther’s heart belongs in Dublin and, more specifically, Grogan’s bar.

“I spent just under three months in Dublin recently shooting the TV adaptation of Ronan Hession’s Leonard And Hungry Paul and had such a nice time,” Alex enthuses. “Honestly, it’s my favourite job I’ve done. We were living near Stephen’s Green and became regulars at Grogan’s – their cheese toasties are amazing – and were able to enjoy the freakishly good weather you had in April/May. Every evening was glorious, so we sat outside with our pints thinking we were on holiday.

“I hadn’t come across the book before,” the 29-year-old continues, “but read it during the audition process. In many ways the scripts were very faithful but they also tried to narratively make sense of it over a six-part, half-an-hour per episode series. I got to meet the amazing, slightly eccentric Ronan Hession. He’s his own person which is so rare these days. He’s a full-time civil servant so I felt quite silly and inadequate in his presence. There’s him doing a proper job and I’m just acting…”

Also a musician who used to trade as Mumblin’ Deaf Ro – check out 2012’s ace Dictionary Crimes – Hession’s debut novel tells the story of two friends who love board games and change the world by discovering the small things they can do and offering them to others.

The Dubliner uses all of his literary powers to gently lure you into their world, which is a damn site more appealing than the one we have to inhabit on a daily basis. Its joint RTÉ/BBC makeover found Alex starring alongside the Derry girl force of nature that is Jamie-Lee O’Donnell.

“Force of nature is right,” he laughs. “Somebody needs to write Jamie-Lee her own comedy show – or she needs to write it herself! We’d both previously been in something called Lloyd Of The Flies – pun very much intended! – but being an animation you tend to do your voice acting separately from everyone else. Our first time meeting was actually at the Leonard And Hungry Paul auditions. Laurie Kynaston, who plays the other lead, had worked with Jamie-Lee on Derry Girls, so there was a familiarity there and we all instantly clicked.

“People have got really attached to Ronan’s book, which is so kind and gentle and lovely. I think the essence of that bled into the atmosphere on set. The smallness of gesture that Leonard and Paul value so highly infected us all and we had such a great time that, honestly, I didn’t want to leave.”

Despite his polished English tones, Alex Lawther is actually one of us.

“My dad’s from Belfast and my mother’s side of the family is from Mayo, so I visited a lot growing up,” he resumes. “My toddler days were in the late ‘90s when the Good Friday Agreement had been signed, so we went there at Easter and sometimes in the school holidays and had a lovely time. My grandma, who was the last of the grandparents, passed away a couple of years ago but my uncle and his family are still living by the sea in Bangor.

“Until Leonard And Hungry Paul, I’d never spent enough time in Dublin to realise just how cultural a city it is. When we were there the dance festival was on and it felt really vibrant.”

Ahead of Leonard And Hungry Paul hitting TV screens, you’ll be able to see Alex starring in Alien: Earth, the big – and we mean big – budget prequel to the original Sigourney Weaver ‘in space no one can hear you scream’ sci-fi chiller, which made its Disney+ bow on August 13 and is now dropping the old-fashioned way every Wednesday.

Asked whether he’s a fan of the original 1979 Alien, Alex – who was minus-sixteen years old when Ridley Scott unleashed it – shoots back: “Yeah, love it! I watched it first with my mum who had a bit of a crush on Sigourney. Understandably! I remember thinking how strange it was in a beautiful way. Its slowness and quietness and how much time we spend at the beginning watching them eat their breakfast when they first get out of those cryo chambers. The design and texture of that spaceship and the one-piece John Hurt wears after he’s been operated on – they all really made an impression on me. There’s some of that same sensibility in the new series.”

How did the prequel, which is set in 2120, first come on to his radar?

“I auditioned for it when it was called Mr. October, which is typical Hollywood trying to keep things secret,” he reveals. “They sent us scenes which were from the TV show in the end, so my agent said, ‘It’s probably this Alien series’ and I was like, ‘Okay, I really want this!’”

FX's Alien: Earth -- Pictured: (l-r) Alex Lawther as Hermit, Diêm Camille as Siberian, Moe Bar-El as Rashidi. CR: Patrick Brown/FX

What can Alex tell us about his character, J.D. Hermit?

“Well, first of all, J.D. stands for Joe DiMaggio, as in the famous baseball player,” he reveals. “His sister, Wendy, calls him Joe but to everyone else he’s just Hermit the medic.

“I don’t want to give away spoilers, but I think it’s known that Wendy was a child and that her consciousness has been transferred to a first-of-its-kind ‘synthetic’. This synthetic has the same memories and sense of humour as his kid sister but in an adult body. She was probably nine or ten when he last saw her and now she’s essentially a robot and indestructible which, as you can imagine, takes a bit of getting used to!”

Some of Hermit’s key scenes are opposite Timothy Olyphant who plays Kirsh, another synthetic tasked with protecting and mentoring hybrids like Wendy.

Do you learn by osmosis just from being around a Hollywood legend like him?

“Yes, definitely,” Alex nods. “He has what we call ‘Big Tim energy’. Most of us were in our late twenties and bowled over by the scale of what we were doing for a number of months in Thailand. Y’know, paddling really hard to keep up where Tim has such an ease to him and instinctively knows what a scene needs and when it’s been nailed. ‘Okay, I’m done’ and that’s the end of the day for Tim! I’d love to be an actor who’s that self-aware and supremely talented.”

As Alex said, the bulk of the Alien: Earth filming was done in Thailand with Bangkok, Surat Thani, Krabi and Phang Nga all providing backdrops to the action.

“There were 1,600 local crew alone living and working in what essentially became this small town,” he marvels. “You had the Thai casting crew and the international casting crew, so everything was multilingual. How lucky were we to be welcomed to a host country and be immersed in their culture whilst making a massive show about aliens?”

The new series kicks off with a mysterious space vessel crash-landing on Earth and a young woman and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers making a shocking discovery.

“This ship collected five different life forms from the darkest corners of the universe,” we’re told as the recovery crew realise that their mission is far from routine.

With this new threat unlocked, they must fight for survival and what they choose to do with this discovery could change planet Earth as they know it.

She’s not in the cast list but speculation is rife that Sigourney Weaver will be reprising her Ripley role towards the end of the series.

Has Alex seen finished episodes with all the CGI and dramatic music added?

“A couple and they look – and  sound – fucking cool!” he enthuses. “I’ve also seen bits where they haven’t been added and, yeah, there was work to be done! When you’re on set, it’s basically just the seed of what you end up watching at home. That’s especially true of the Alien: Earth showrunner, Noah Hawley, who’s known for taking what’s been filmed and then really creating something within the edit.

“He’s very playful and confident in letting the show follow his instincts. He’s not a servant to what was in the script, so by the end of the process it can become something else again. He previously did that with Fargo and look how many Emmys it got him!”

Alien: Earth isn’t the only extraterrestrial intrigue that Alex Lawther has beeninvolved in recently with Andor: A Star Wars Story fans probably recognising him as one of the fighters for Luthen Rael’s resistance network, Karis Nemik.

“When I auditioned for Andor it was a totally invented scene from a script labeled Untitled Project, which was even more Hollywood secrecy!” Alex chuckles. “Alien: Earth has since probably matched it, but at the time Andor was the biggest thing I’d been involved with production-wise. Some of the actors were in both seasons and got to tread in many different worlds but my role was quite contained – just three episodes shot on the edge of the ocean in the north of Scotland. So, it felt both big budget and like we were in a high-end indie film with great production values.

“It’s a funny coincidence that in a short space of time I’ve ended up doing two quite major sci-fi franchises. Tony Gilroy, the Andor creator, likes to cast these actors who are really dextrous and give them great things to say. He does what sci-fi does best, which is talking about what’s happening right now but using a big metaphor that gives us enough space to look at the things that are being spoken about.”

Having cut his teeth as a stage actor – “I was one of the nerdy 13 and 14-year-olds who joined the drama club at my school and did improv” – Lawther’s TV breakout role was as loveable psychopath James in The End Of The F***ing World, the Channel 4 series which took British comedy to new depths of darkness.

Does he miss the gang that he worked with for two glorious years?

“Yes,” Alex nods, “I miss Jess Barden and Naomi Ackee and the directors Lucy Forbes and Destiny Ekaragha. It was the first time I’d done something over two seasons and which made me recognisable in supermarkets!

“Charlie Covell, our showrunner, made that brilliant show with Jeff Goldblum in it, KAOS, which was on Netflix last year; Jess is very busy as an actor and has also had two kids now; and Naomi has become an international superstar. Sometimes people mention a project and you’re like, ‘Oh god, no! I wasn’t good in that episode of Doctors!’ But I have a lot of nostalgia for that show and those people.”

Another big career landmark for Alex was starring in the Season 3 Shut Up And Dance episode of Black Mirror.

What’s Charlie Brooker like to be around?

“He’s pretty normal,” Alex almost apologises. “He’s got great hair and operates closely with his partner in crime, Annabel Jones. Black Mirror is so much his brainchild but he gave a lot of space to our director, James Watkins, to make his own episode. Charlie was there a lot on set but I don’t remember too much interaction.”

Alex’s episode, in which a teenager falls into a deadly online trap, is as dark as fuck. Did he suffer a hangover from that afterwards?

“No, but it affected me during it.” he admits. “I remember getting quite sick on set, which may have been a bad case of food poisoning but was more likely a bodily reaction to my character being in a constant state of dread and panic.

“I don’t know if you remember those scenes where Kenny’s about to fight that guy to death in the woods. The other guy also having committed what he’s done. Between ‘cut’ and ‘action’, I was throwing up in the woods because, I suspect, my nervous system was fried.”

The End of the Fucking World.

Left-leaning in his views, Alex’s actvism has seen him campaign against LGBTQI+ youth conversation therapy; demand a permanent ceasefire in Gaza; make a climate change-inspired short, For People In Trouble, which the likeminded Matt Damon and Ben Affleck got behind; appear in an online ad for Extinction Rebellion; and support Choose Love, the largest NGO distributor of refugee aid in Europe. Any one of which could see Donald J.’s goons pulling his US work visa.

“Nan Goldin, the American photographer, said something beautiful recently in relation to Palestine, which is that, ‘It’s more important to have a mouth than it is to be an artist.’ Speaking out has to take precedence over everything else.”

If I’d asked Alex why he’s in Vancouver a few hours earlier he’d have said “No comment!” but Netflix has just announced that he’s co-starring alongside Julia Garner and West Belfast’s very own Anthony Boyle in The Altruists.

“Talking of activism, Anto is good friends with Kneecap who I think I’m right in saying are playing Vancouver soon, which is a definite cast night out!” Alex enthuses. “He’s playing Sam Brankman-Fried in this twisted, real life love story about a couple who pull off a multi-billion dollar crypto scam. Anthony is amazing and someone I’ve watched and followed for a while now.”

Is Alex going to hire himself a convertible and go on a West Coast Vancouver-Portland, Oregon road trip?

“I’d love to but sadly I’ve just failed my driving test,” he sighs. “Badly. I did one of those silly crash courses, and of course it’s not enough time, so I made three major errors. I hear there’s a train I can take, though, so Portland here I come!”

• Alien: Earth is streaming now on Disney+.