By Derek Lawrence

Copyright gq

This story contains spoilers for Alien: Earth, up to and including episode seven.
Timothy Olyphant knows he’s hit the “sweet spot” of celebrity. He gets to be a leading man and work with some of the best actors and filmmakers in the business, but he also can go completely unnoticed at his local coffee shop.
“I’m trying not to ruin it,” he says of his status. “I mean, I had to give the lady my name for the order — and I come here all the time! [Laughs.] So she’s offended me twice.”
In the barista’s defense, Olyphant isn’t currently sporting the bleached hair that played a major part in his transformation into Kirsh, the synthetic mentor on FX’s Alien: Earth. And yet, the three-time Emmy nominee has been almost impossible to miss over the last 25 years, fronting iconic series like Deadwood and Justified, while also giving memorable scene-stealing performances in everything from The Office to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, as well as the recent Apple TV+ hit comedy Stick.
Creator Noah Hawley’s entry into the world of Alien allowed Olyphant to step outside of the rugged-lawman roles he’s known for and give him something he’d been seeking: the risk of failure. “It’s been gratifying to hear people responding well to the work,” he says, “because it felt like it was one step away from being a big mistake.”
Set two years before the events of Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien film, Earth brings the Xenomorph and other species to humanity’s home turf for the first time, launching a war between dueling companies in the process. As Prodigy’s chief scientist, synthetic Kirsh operates under the orders of CEO Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), who has created the “Lost Boys,” a group of terminally ill children whose human consciousness were transferred into synthetic bodies. Kirsh takes the Lost Boys under his wing, but the arrival of the aliens at Prodigy’s research island sets off a chain of events that has the kids suddenly thinking for themselves.
For his part, Kirsh has stood by as Slightly (Adarsh Gourav) is manipulated by rival cyborg Morrow (Babou Ceesay) into smuggling out the facehugger creature. The penultimate episode of season 1, “Emergence,” reveals that Kirsh was luring Morrow into a trap. But, while Morrow might now be locked up, the Xenomorph is free and on the hunt, and Lost Boy leader Wendy (Sydney Chandler) is realizing her unprecedented power.
On a break from making ceramics at his nearby studio, Olyphant goes deep on his Alien journey and what’s to come in the finale. Oh, and he also decides to push a few rumors about himself.
GQ: Preparing to talk to you, I was like, between Alien and Stick, Tim’s having a bit of a moment right now…and then I saw you quoted saying that you’ve never had a moment in your career. I really hope you don’t believe that!
Timothy Olyphant: I don’t know what this is yet. If this is a moment, it might be lost on me. But I’m enjoying whatever it is. With Stick and Alien, it’s fun to be in something that the people I know are watching. I’ve had a good run—very few money gigs of late.
After working with Noah on season 4 of Fargo, what was the initial reaction when he came to you about Kirsh?
It was an exciting read because it didn’t feel like a layup, yet I knew he wrote Kirsh with me in mind. So I took it as a compliment and challenge. I asked him, “Why me?” and we talked about qualities that we felt were in my ballpark, but he was offering me an opportunity to take some risks, and it’s always fun when something feels like a nice fit and that I think it could fail miserably. Noah took a big IP and decided to completely make it [his] own. As we’re deeper into the season, it’s like Noah said, “I’ll take your monster and make it my fucking pet.” He’s doing something really bold, but you have to be careful about not making it just a show about ideas. As the words were coming out of my mouth on set, I knew, I’m not sure what this is, but I’m having a good time. You’re trying to do something that feels new and fresh, that piques [your] interest, but also making it feel as though it’s very lived in and effortless. We didn’t rehearse, and I didn’t tell him, “Here’s what I’m thinking.” I just showed up on set and started talking funny and doing mannerisms, and he was like, “Yeah, okay.”
You’re someone who could easily be the face of a show if you want to be, but this is a true ensemble, filled with a lot of younger actors. And then obviously the alien is going to be the face of any Alien project. Did you welcome not having a series fully on your shoulders?
I’m pretty far down on the call sheet. And the guy on the poster’s not even on the call sheet, so there’s no mistaking who the real star of this thing is. It’s just fun to be a part of something good, no matter how much heavy lifting you have to do. I think my job here is to be as entertaining as possible. He’s not the lead, so I know that the burden is not on me, but my role is to mentor, challenge and kind of fuck with these kids. Everybody’s trying to figure out, Is this guy here to help? Does he have ulterior motives? And when we are shooting, I’m kind of playing a little game of trying to keep everyone off balance.
I wouldn’t say that Noah is overwhelming you with dialogue, and so a lot of your performance is in the mannerisms and physicality.
I watched the first movie so many times, and even prior to this role, I’ve really focused on Ian Holm’s performance. And once you realize he was synthetic the whole time, part of the joy of rewatching is seeing all the choices that he made—they were so human. There are moments where he stretches, lets out a big sigh. I showed up on day one and had a list of physical things that I saw him do that I was going to work into the performance. There’s a scene where I’m with the kids and I stand up and stretch myself out, and those choices gave me so much pleasure, because it’s unexpected. You’re like, “Why is this synthetic stretching?” But why not? You can give AI any sort of personality. The fun of the job was seeing how far I could push what I don’t associate as robotic or synthetic behavior into the performance and people would still feel like, no, that just must be the guy. I figured Noah had written everything so well that I didn’t think I could fuck it up. And even now thinking about going back to film [a season 2], I’m not exactly sure what I did. [Laughs.] But it felt good when we were doing it.
Where did the inspiration for the hair come from?
It felt like the role called for something that visually was going to separate him and superficially suggest that he’s “other.” I tend to look for things that make the job easier for me, so it’s nice to be able to just put on the Batsuit and be like, Oh, you’re Batman. Early on I said, “I think I want to bleach my hair,” and then we got to set and Noah did a screen test and came back [saying] “You have to do the eyebrows too.” And the eyebrows might have been an even better choice than the hair.
Also, I wanted to have a conversation with the movies from that era. I’m a fan of Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner, Sting in David Lynch’s Dune. Kirsh is the chief scientist but I was giving Noah some visual cues of where I thought he should go. [Deadwood creator] David Milch used to talk to me about looking for the contradiction, so if he acts like a scientist but looks like a rock star? Not a bad call.
Kirsh is a father figure to these kids, and parents always want their children to be better than them, but, for Kirsh, that’s almost a guarantee given they are the next generation of tech above him. How did you approach that dynamic with the Lost Boys?
That’s a great analogy. I did think of it as classic parenting, in that you see in them the opportunity for something better than yourself. In this case, he perhaps sees himself as better than everyone else around, and yet, these six young people might be the most exciting thing going for him because he sees a better world through them. It’s hard not to think that there’s a version of this story where his role in life was to serve Boy Kavalier, but these six Lost Boys have maybe started to make him rethink his purpose.
It’s pretty electric whenever you and Babou Ceesay have been opposite each other as Kirsh and Morrow, especially in the elevator scene in episode 6 when they are just casually hurling insults and vague threats of violence. And there’s definitely now the potential for more of that with Kirsh trapping Morrow.
Babou is a force. I got so excited when we finally got in the same room together. Right off the bat I was like, This is special. The elevator scene was fun. It was so bizarre where this new job that feels like somewhat of a “departure” was sort of holding hands with a tone of things that I’d already done. I kept saying to myself, “Okay, I just want to make sure I’m not stepping out of this thing I’ve established,” because the scene started to feel like a Western.
You could totally see Justified’s Raylan (Olyphant) and Boyd (Walton Goggins) in that elevator.
Exactly! And so you want to make sure I’m not falling into a different thing. But when we started doing the scene, I was like, wait, I’ve done this, I know what this scene wants to be. These are working-class guys, and you have the same troubles I have. You work for your guy, I work for my guy, and we could hang out and talk shop. Once we clicked into that, it was like, Oh, this is a super fun game to play, I can’t wait to get back together. That sense of, we share a lot of things in common…but we may have to kill each other.
Another great example of Noah being open to where it wants to go as opposed to what he may have had planned. I knew he wanted this relationship between the two of us to continue to unfold and try to reach some sense of a peak before we wrapped, and he came to me one day and said, “I think I have a great thing for you and Babou,” and I said, “I only have one question: is there violence involved?” And he said, “There could be.” And I said, “It’d be nice if there was.” [Laughs.]
Up until the reveal that Kirsh was letting all of this happen as a way to capture Morrow, it was easy to be suspicious of his lack of action. It seems like he’s just following Boy Kavalier’s orders, but how do you view his ongoing motivations?
I’m still not convinced that he doesn’t potentially have his own ideas in mind. When they talk about the difference between an animal that’s been tamed versus domesticated, a wolf can be tamed but it’s never going to be domesticated. The wolf is constantly thinking, You turn your back and I might change my mind about this whole arrangement. I saw this as a similar role. Yes, he seems to have done everything he’s supposed to do, but I don’t buy that he’s not constantly crunching a lot of numbers. As the story goes, he continues to withhold more and more. Noah will say he has been seemingly programmed to not hurt Boy Kavalier, and I’d say, “Sure…but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t thought of it.” And I also know that there’s always a version of what I think keeps people up at night now, which is, is AI going to solve all our problems, and if we are asking it to, are we going to like the answers? Because that’s the danger.
How would you tee up the finale for viewers?
All I can tell you is that, when we shot that ending, I had one of my favorite feelings, which is that it felt totally unexpected, yet inevitable. Like, of course this is where it was headed from the jump. I think it’s going to be both a very satisfying ending and have people really leaning forward. The idea of another season is a year-plus away, but, boy, that ending feels like, okay, let’s get to it!
Alien isn’t the only universe extension that you’re a part of, as you recently outed yourself as appearing in David Fincher’s upcoming Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sequel.
Yeah, that’s a rumor…that I may have started. [Sly smile] I can’t confirm that that’s really happening. This is my new thing though, maybe I just start a rumor every few months. I’m really rooting for this rumor that I started to be true.
I do think it’s a legal requirement for me to ask you if we’re going to get more Justified.
Let’s start that rumor too; we can just say that’s happening as well. Look, I’d love to be on a set with Walton Goggins, so fingers crossed. I think we have a window of a few years. I don’t know what the cutoff is, but hopefully we’ll sneak it in before we’re all done. Speaking of moments, we gotta pin Walt down.
What drives you at this point? Are there certain things you still want to do?
I still just have a ball doing the job. And I’ve enjoyed the opportunities to be really challenged, and those experiences make me hungry for more of those types of challenges. On this job, to feel like you put yourself out there in a way that I could have really made an asshole out of myself, and then when it feels like it works, you immediately start thinking, what’s the next thing that is unexpected for me, like, can I pull that off? It’s a really nice experience to be a month away from showing up on set and feeling like I could be falling on my face. I’d love to put myself in more of those positions.
No matter the profession, that’s a good feeling to have 30 years into something.
That’s exactly right. Years ago I was on the set of [2003’s Dreamcatcher], and there were a bunch of guys that I felt like were my peers, Damian Lewis and Jason Lee, and I was just thrilled to be around them. And then Morgan Freeman was there, already a legend, and I couldn’t tell who was having more fun, him or me. I remember clocking that then, thinking, if 30 years from now, I could still be having as much fun as him, I may have found a great profession, and so far that’s proven to be the case. If I can squeeze out another 10 years of that feeling, of being challenged and enthusiastic, I’ll happily hang up my coat. I can’t believe I’ve gotten away with it so far.