Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with Resident Alien’s Alan Tudyk

Emmy-nominated actor Alan Tudyk is the star of SYFY’s must-see new series Resident Alien. Based on the comic book series by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse, Resident Alien follows an extraterrestrial (Tudyk) who crash lands on Earth and must assume the identity of a small-town doctor named Harry Vanderspiegle. Arriving with a secret mission to end humanity, Harry begins living the simple life before he’s roped into solving a local murder and realizes that he needs to assimilate into his new world.

Pop Culturalist had the pleasure of speaking with Alan about the series, what it’s like working on a project adapted from a popular comic book franchise, and how he prepared to tackle the physicality of his character.

PC: Tell us about Resident Alien and your character in the series.
Alan: Resident Alien is about an alien that I play who crash lands on Earth and takes over Harry Vanderspeigle’s identity. He becomes Harry and then gets pulled into this small town to help solve a murder. He’s an alien trying to hide out while he finds this device that he came to Earth with to destroy all of humankind. In the meantime, he’s learning to be human in Patience, Colorado.

PC: When you’re working on a project that’s being adapted from a popular comic book series, how challenging is it for you to find the balance between paying homage to the source material but also giving this project and your character a unique spin?
Alan: So much of that work is done by the writers. Chris Sheridan [showrunner] and his approach to the project was done before I came on board. There are definitely similarities. There’s a murder in the first comic of Resident Alien, but it gets solved in the first comic. We stretch that out over the first season; it’s an ongoing thing. It becomes great source material to read and be entertained by because you have a personal attachment to the world from doing the show, but this is definitely a different version of it.

It helps to have more information out there, but I like the changes that they made. The changes that were made to do the show make it a better TV show. When you’re doing a TV show, it’s best to focus on that world.

PC: Over the course of the first season, we see your character adjusting to life on Earth and experiencing everything for the first time. Can you talk a bit about how you approached that physicality?
Alan: Yeah, he’s learning to walk. There’s this great little quick sequence of him learning to brush his teeth and learning to sit down, but he falls forward instead. We shot that in an afternoon. It’s fun to pretend like you don’t know how your body works.

I took some clowning classes before we did this series to play to that physicality and physical comedy. I had taken some a long time ago back in the nineties when I went to school. This great clown teacher, Chris Bayes, did a workshop in LA, so I took his class to refresh my mind on playing that physicality.

When we got to set, it was like, “What are we going to do? Let’s do things of him learning to walk. What is that like?” I did different versions of that. Learning to sit. Different versions of that. Learning to eat. I destroyed that chicken, but that was disgusting. I ate bones, man. I chewed up bones. I didn’t know you could do that until it happened. That was fun. It became like a really fun acting class when we shot it and they’re going to put it on TV.

To keep up with Alan, follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Watch Resident Alien every Wednesday at 10/9c on SYFY.