FX’s ‘Alien’ Series Announces First Casting: Sydney Chandler

The Alien TV series that Noah Hawley is making for FX Productions has locked in its first bit of casting: Sydney Chandler, whom you may have seen in FX/Hulu’s May 2022 Sex Pistols biopic series.

No character details are yet available, our sister site Variety reports.

Chandler’s previous TV credits include the aforementioned Pistol, in which she played Chrissie Hynde, and Apple TV+’s upcoming Sugar, a contemporary take on a private detective story starring Kirby Howell-Baptiste and Colin Farrell. She also co-starred in last year’s Olivia Wilde-directed psychological thriller Don’t Worry Darling.

FX chief John Landgraf shared back in January that Hawley was in “active preproduction” of the first season of Alien, having written the scripts and met with his production designer. “So that’s gearing up for production this year,” after Hawley completes filming Fargo Season 5, Landgraf said.

No plot details have emerged, though Landgraf some time ago said that the series is “set not too far into our future” and would be “the first Alien story to be set on Earth.”

Hawley himself, meanwhile, shed a bit more light on what he has planned, making clear, “It’s not a Ripley story” involving any iteration of Sigourney Weaver’s seminal sci-fi heroine. “She’s one of the great characters of all time,” Hawley noted, “and I think the story has been told pretty perfectly, and I don’t want to mess with it.”

Hawley also explained that by setting the TV series on Earth, the typical confines of the movies become a non-issue. “The Alien stories are always trapped…. Trapped in a prison, trapped in a spaceship,” he said. “I thought it would be interesting to open it up a little bit so that the stakes of ‘What happens if you can’t contain it?’ are more immediate.”

Whether the yet-to-be-officially titled series ends up airing on FX or streaming on Hulu will be decided at a later date.