This Friday, Michael Fassbender returns to the Alien franchise after his turn as the ‘synthetic’ human David in 2012’s Prometheus. For Alien: Covenant, however, his great friend and director, Ridley Scott, has raised the stakes, setting the formidably talented Irish actor the challenge of playing two different androids within the same film. Not only is Fassbender again slipping into the skin of David, whose scientific meddling and elusive motives in Prometheus were at the root of so many horrors, he is also playing Walter, the Covenant’s synthetic crew member. This has meant the versatile star of the X-Men series, and Oscar nominee for 12 Years a Slave and Steve Jobs, has got to perform entire scenes opposite, well, himself!
In Alien: Covenant, you have two roles. So who is it you play alongside David?
I also play Walter who is the synthetic on the Covenant ship. He is sort of a different version of what David was, because David was very human-like and had elements in his programming that allowed him to develop human personality traits that freaked people out. So they built the following synthetics with less of those human design traits. Walter is very much a non-emotional robot.
Does this mean you get to act with yourself?
Indeed, there are a couple of scenes just between David and Walter. We did some cool stuff there where we filmed it with the camera on a special computerised crane. When we do the David take, the movement of the crane is mapped in electronically. So when we do the reverse for Walter, it will follow that same electronic path as it did for David. Then they’ll lay me in as Walter into the scene with David. That was pretty cool. It is interesting to see how technology has developed on that front.
Is he still influenced by Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia as he was in Prometheus?
I am still taking that as a central thing. I don’t want to veer away too much from what people saw in Prometheus. So there are some elements that will remain constant and that sort of Peter O’Toole influence is still very much there. There is a reference to Lawrence of Arabia in a scene that I do where he is singing the song that Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) sings where it echoes around the valley. So there are still those things. I think that is cool, when you do that with any franchise or running series. You can do little hat tips to previous films and have a level of consistency that the audience can anchor themselves down with. Then when you want to go and do different things and take the character to different places, they are more willing to do that having found a place with him that is familiar.
Playing both Walter and David must be a tremendous challenge as an actor…
It’s helpful to have a clear idea. It’s fun. When I got offered Prometheus and went into that, I wanted to make sure that it was going to be fun doing something like this, to be part of this Alien world and work with Ridley. It is really just seeing how far you can push certain things. David is very clear to me. I understand him very well. It is just trying to find fun things to do. Sometimes they work and sometime they don’t. It was also important to find the comedy in him as well, because the film is going to be really scary. In Prometheus, even when he got his head ripped off that was kind of funny!
How much have you looked at Ian Holm’s performance as Ash in Alien as an inspiration?
For Prometheus, I didn’t look at him at all. I didn’t look at Bishop (played by Lance Henriksen) in Aliens either. I didn’t look at any of the previous synthetic incarnations. I really rooted it in Peter O’Toole, David Bowie and Olympic diver Greg Louganis — they were my three influences for him. They remain my hook for him.
I also watched Blade Runner before Prometheus to see the Replicants (a fictional biorobotic android) in that. This time, on the plane over to Sydney, I did watch Alien and Aliens. Took a look to see what both robots were doing there. Then for Walter, there is more Leonard Nimoy in there, sort of a Spock-like influence. I wanted something that was without emotional content, something that was very logical. It’s interesting looking back at Ash, I think he has purposefully played him very human. It is only after the fact, when you watch it again knowing he is a robot, you almost project the idea that he is a robot onto him. I think he plays it very human-like. Whereas I have gone the opposite direction with this, and I went the opposite with Prometheus as well, where we know early on that it is a robot.
Have you been involved in the development of Alien: Covenant with Ridley Scott since Prometheus?
I have had conversations with Ridley for sure, every now and again, but I didn’t have a great deal of input on the script. We kept in contact. We’re friends and we have had dinners since Prometheus and discussed it, but I can’t take any credit for any of the ideas in the script. It is as we are going along and playing, I sort of add some ideas.
Is Alien: Covenant a different kind of film than Prometheus?
I would say that it remains in the universe. We were introduced to the Engineers in Prometheus, but they will play less of a role in this. In terms of its feel as a film, it is probably harking back more to Alien in terms of it being a thriller. I think it will be a lot scarier than Prometheus. Once it starts, it is relentless. But not in a way that you see with a lot of action films where it is action-packed. This is psychological suspense. The elements of Prometheus that are present are in the grandness, the world that we are trying to explore, the planet that we are on. Those things are similar. What really made Alien stand alone is that you never left the ship, so it was a very claustrophobic experience. There are elements of that in this, for sure. This has a more expansive sort of world that is much more exposed and breathable than just the confines of a ship.
The story so far...
Prometheus delved into a question that was unanswered in the original series — where did the Xenomorphs, the iconic alien in the original movie, come from? In doing so it came up with the concept of the Engineers, a group of humanoid beings with pale skin, who created human beings. Prometheus left us with more questions than answers — what killed the Engineers on LV-223, the planetoid that the Prometheus visits? If the Engineers created humans, why were they trying to destroy them? We see a Deacon instead of a Xenomorph, so how do they come into the picture? How do they get from LV-223 to LV-426, the planetoid that Nostromo, the ship from Alien, lands on?
We are hoping some of the questions will be answered in Alien: Covenant.
What the trailers tell us...
The Covenant is the first interstellar colony vessel carrying colonisers who are setting out to an uncharted planet to make it habitable for people from Earth. We find beautiful mountains, flowing water and even wheat on the planet they land in but there is absolute absence of living organisms. Or is it?
David, the synthetic from Prometheus is back, and we know that Elizabeth Shaw (Rooney Mara) put him back together. David, it seems, is not done with experimenting with the black goo, and we see him dropping the black goo cylinders on a city of sorts. We don’t know what happened to Shaw.
A lot of the action happens on the ship, which makes film a closer cousin of Alien than Prometheus. And we know it is definitely gorier than any film in the franchise.
The people...
Unlike any of the other films in the franchise, the crew aboard the ship are all couples who are ready to set up base in another planet. We assume it will be far more effective when people start dying.
♦ Michael Fassbender returns as the synthetic, David, and plays the role of a new synthetic called Walter.
♦ Katherine Waterson of Fantastic Beasts and Where You Can Find Them is playing Daniels (yep, she has no first name, yet), the terraforming expert aboard the Covenant. She is married to Jacob Branson, the captain of the ship, played by James Franco (who we know from the trailers is offed pretty early in the film).
♦ Billy Crudup plays Christopher Oram, the first mate and chief science officer, and eventually takes on the captain’s role (Daniels calls him captain in one of the trailers). He is married to Carmen Ejogo’s (also of Fantastic Beasts fame) Karine, a biologist. Danny McBride plays a space cowboy and chief pilot Tennesse.
♦ We also get the franchise’s first LGBTQ couple in Sergeant Lope (Demian Bichir), the security head of the Covenant, and his husband Sergeant Hallet (Nathaniel Dean), who is a member of his security team.
