wHen was first announced in 2013 because the idea of a TV miniseries was reimagined, which was actually a victim. Neo-Noir, who was head of Minnesota State Police in 1996 by Frances McDormand as Chief of the Minnesota State Police, is a bizarre film that won two Oscars. Of course, will its unique Coen Brothers vibe be chopped in the trunks adapted from TV?
At that time, screenwriter Noah Hawley, who took over the job, would agree. “It seems like a terrible idea,” he said via a video call from Long Island Holiday Glass Hole. “That's why I like it. The risk/reward is really high.”
If his views on Fargo exaggerate the original, Hawley's joke, he will be “burned”. But his approach is more wise to reimagine than direct adaptation, with Billy Bob Thornton and Martin Freeman leading a new town story of malicious and unfortunate little town that perfectly captures the essence of Coens. Fargo won three Emmys in 2014 (including a great limited series) and continued to be a star-studded anthology for four seasons, while Showrunnner Hawley discovers an interesting new angle each time.
What exactly is it? …(from left) Sydney Chandler, Essi Davis, Noah Hawley and Timothy Oliffen on Alien: Earth. Photo: Patrick Brown
Hawley's latest franchise mix is a literal beast if you're doing a big swing on Fargo. Alien: Earth is a prequel series for the durable sci-fi franchise that began with Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror film. Despite many alien movie sequels, crossovers and spin-offs, it's hissing, nightmarish Xenomorph (perhaps the best monster ever invented,” Hawley suggests-Halley suggests-trying to colonize TV.
This approach must be different from the branch Aliens that succeeded last year: Romulus, Romulus, Romulus, a back-to-back Slasher that picks up plot threads from Scott's original work. “Alien movies are a two-hour survival story, so monsters can be monsters,” Hawley said. “But in a 10-hour, 30-hour 50-hour show, there's a reason monsters have to exist. You don't kill everyone, either, so there has to be a continuous serialized story where monsters fit.”
Hawley welcomed widespread acclaim from Fargo and his 2017 Series and his 2017 Series Legion, a subversiveness of the X-Men comics myth, and Hawley helped raise expectations for a small screen branch of existing intellectual property. “The question is always: Why do we do this?” he said. “If you can't answer the 'why?' question, something other than “money,” you should probably stop.” The growing effort in the past has been proven by recent blue-chip TV efforts such as HBO's Penguin and politically accused Star Wars hit Andor.
It's complex and layered…but I hope you come out of every episode: Yes, come on!
As we talk, Hawley is technically on holidays: he, his artist wife, Kyle, and their two teenagers swap the summer at their Austin Texas base for New York. The 58-year-old looks beachy in a casual short-sleeved shirt, but is happy to dig into the guts of his summer blockbusters. It has been pregnant since 2018, when, after the Legion's success, FX Channel asked him how he participated in an alien show. He said: “If you ask me if I have an idea, I will have an idea.”
From sublime prequel Prometheus to crossovers in Alien vs Predator, the franchise schedule has become chaotic over the past 45 years. Hawley's distance on undeveloped territory is zero: what happened on Earth in the years before the alien incident. The result is a mix of fantasy and heavy metal doom by Peter Pan, with a massive ensemble cast including Babou Ceesay, serving as security officer for the poker face, Timothy Olyphant and blonde Android “synthetic”. It is scheduled for 2120 – for several years Sigourney Weaver and her blue-collar space truck driver will get close to their fate – and the Earth has been carved from the conspiracy academy of all-around tech companies.
The franchise long-term limited company weyland-yutani is obviously integrated. But a sharp competitor called Prodigy secretly cracks transhumanism, pouring consciousness into powerful synthesis. What is captured is that only young minds are flexible enough that, therefore, the sick child is eventually reborn as Herculean but emotionally immature “hybrid”. “If you tell a story about humanity, no one is more human than a child,” Hawley said. “They don’t know they are bad liars, they can’t pretend they aren’t scared, they learn to be cynical. So that’s fun for me.”
Beast Mode…Alex Lawther, Diêm Camille and Moe Bar-el in Alien: Earth. Photo: Patrick Brown/FX
Hybrids are deployed in search and rescue missions when a clumsy research ship carries unpleasant cosmic beasts crashing in Thailand's high-tech city. “We’re fast, we’re strong, we won’t break,” Lead Hybrid Wendy noted, Sydney Chandler (pistol, sugar) played with the proper childish choir. In the case of a state of emergency across the city, this stage is designated as a company turf war.
Proposing a new alien that might exist with the familiar xenographer is “hard” for Hawley. The purpose is to evoke the feeling of watching aliens for the first time. “They don't have to carry this day,” he said. “They just have to provide this sense of unpredictability. By introducing these other creatures, I can give you a feeling: Well, now I don't know what will happen.”
After Fargo and Legion’s troubled terrain, the emotional intuition never felt far away, Alien: Earth felt like Hawley, like Hawley, in Brasher, even more shaky. The classic Black Sabbath is a touchstone. “I want this show to be completely entertained from beginning to end,” he said. “It's complicated and layered, but it's also a cliff-block show and you get those huge feelings from Hard Rock and driving a guitar. I want you to come out of every episode: Yes, come on!”
Skip the newsletter promotion
register Saturday
The only way to watch Saturday magazine behind the scenes. Sign up for internal stories from our top writers, as well as every must-read article and column delivered to your inbox every weekend.
Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content funded by external parties. For more information, please see our Privacy Policy. We use Google Recaptcha to protect our website and Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
After the newsletter promotion
Synthetic band… (from left) Jonathan Ajayi, Adarsh Gourav, Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Kit Young, Erana James and Lily Newmark, Alien: Earth: Earth. Photo: FX
Hawley was born and raised in New York City (he had a twin brother Alexi who worked as a TV writer and producer). It was a creative family: his mother, Louise Armstrong, was a writer, painter and activist. His father was trained as an actor. “We grew up in West Village in the 70s and 80s, and the only person at that time was an artist,” he said. “This is not the billionaire today.”
Hawley worked as a paralegal after studying political science, and also participated in rock bands and dabbled in creative writing. At the age of 27, he moved to San Francisco and published his first novel. Despite reaching two books, he is still struggling for follow-up. “My editors have left and the publishers aren’t really interested in the books I wrote, so I was a desperate moment,” he said. Helping a friend perfect the script led him to sell and sell his own project: “For six months, I came from someone who basically didn’t know how I was going to keep the lighting until the end of the year to the rest of the entire career.”
He continues to write novels with his acting career—his sixth national anthem, published in 2022—and starred in the Sky with astronaut Psychodrama Lucy in the Sky, and first published in 2019. If this plea approach suggests some kind of creative uneasiness-he also provides vocals for the Legion's closed cover sound-it's also a conscious attempt to diversify. “This gives me a lot of choices because artists translate into a kind of control over their own destiny,” he said.
Work on the Ice… Martin Freeman in Noah Hawley’s 2014 Fargo adaptation. Photo: Channel 4/Sportsphoto/Allstar
An unexpected early influence was British comedy. After studying theaters in London, his father returned with Goon Show LPS, which Hawley and his brother will soon remember. “I just wore these records,” he recalled, and he also devoured the NPR repetition of the BBC's 1978 radio sitcom The Galaxy Guide and was excited to see young people seeing them in an impressive era.
This means training with Adrian Edmondson as a sinister assistant to aliens: Earth is a true full-circle moment. “I told Adrian that the young man had a moment [in the episode Flood] He said that it can be all you need to know about me,” he said, “That was when his character Vyvyan walked into the closet and eventually went into Narnia. When I saw it, I must be in my teenage years, it was so shocking that you can have magical realism in comedy about roommates. ”
What was it like to know his childhood hero? “I find that with many comedians, their downtime is very different. Adrian is very measured, you know.” Holly smiled. “He’s more like the character on our show than Vivien.”
Alien: Earth launches on Disney+, England on August 13.
This article was revised on July 31, 2025. The earlier version said that the BBC's TV sitcom “The Galaxy's Free-Ride Guide” was an adaptation of the novel. But before the radio show.