As an audience member, watching a parasitic monster violently force its way out of a human chest cavity is a wholly unpleasant sight — one that’s been effectively captivating audiences since the Alien franchise began almost half a century ago.
Interestingly, the visceral experience could not be more different from the acting side of things, according to Alien: Romulus cast member Aileen Wu, who had the time of her life playing the character of Navarro, a spaceship pilot and the very first Xenomorph victim of the movie.
Now streaming on Hulu (directed and co-written by Don’t Breathe mastermind Fede Álvarez, it takes place between the events of Alien and Aliens), Romulus follows a group of young miners looking to escape the downtrodden, and borderline Dickensian, existence forced upon them by the Weyland-Yutani corporation. To do that, however, they need cryo-pods and to get cryo-pods, they need to raid an abandoned Weyland-Yutani research station orbiting above just the drab mining colony the characters call home. Naturally, the station is teeming with the many-legged scourge of LV-46, one of which attaches itself to Navarro’s unfortunate puem…
Alien: Romulus star Aileen Wu talks her brutal Chestburster scene and learning how to fly a spaceship
Josh Weiss: It’s a big honor in the Alien franchise to be the first Chestburster victim of the movie. When did you find out Navarro would be the first to go and what was it like filming that scene?
Aileen Wu: I read the full script before I even got the part, so I knew what was in store for Navarro. I’d only watched the first Alien up until that point [and] I was really excited to do such a physical scene. It’s very demanding on the body to give a reaction of something alive bursting through your bones. I come from a theater background, so I find physical scenes very freeing as an actor. It’s the one moment where I don’t have to worry about being in my head.
Weiss: How many takes did you have to do?
Wu: That whole sequence took three days [to film]. The first day was before I hit the floor; the second day was all the thrashing the bursting; and then the third day was me me laying there and the puppet is already out my chest. Fede’s notes were, “Your eyes are slightly open because you’re not quite dead yet and do small twitches with your body.” There were just so many takes for each moment because there are also so many other parts, especially for the Chestburster. To have Alec Gillis and his team back on another Alien film — they’ve worked on so many of the previous ones — I really felt like I was a vessel for their work: the puppet they created, the whole system that they had to maneuver it around. The baby Chestburster, it was his scene. I was just the canvas. Those were really fun days.
Weiss: Was it super-uncomfortable being coated in fake blood for hours on end?
Wu: I kind of loved it because [there was] a big reward. There’s nothing like a shower after an 8-hour day where you’re drenched in blood. Getting all the stickiness off, you feel like a brand-new person. It’s like being reborn three times in a week.
Weiss: Did you get a full character backstory for Navarro?
Wu: For sure. I know who her mother is, how she got left at this planet when she was six, how she’s still able to retain Chinese as a language [in spite of the fact that] we’ve colonized the universe as a human race. I had many extensive conversations with Fede about these characters’ backstories and I think it really shows during the movie, even though the plot doesn’t touch on it explicitly.
Weiss: Navarro is the pilot for this crew — at least until she dies. What was it like going up into “space”?
Wu: I was actually most scared about flying the ship. I watched a lot of Star Wars and I’m a big fan of Firefly. Ship piloting is such a… you either nail it or you don’t and if you don’t, it takes the whole audience out. So I was like, “I need help,” and they were very gracious to bring in a real airplane pilot for me who just landed in Budapest and had another flight out the next day. We just sat down in the cockpit and spent an hour-and-a-half and went through all my lines, what they mean. What is the hydraulic pump? What does that do in the engine in the sequence of starting a ship? Bless the lighting team and set dec team [because] every button lit up for real and I could push them for real. That made me realize, “Okay, this is gonna be easy. I don’t have to fake anything.” The ship is a beast, you have to interact with it. Navarro has probably flown it every other day for the past 10-12 years of her life, so the confidence was the big piece in nailing that sequence.
Weiss: As an audience member, you really feel the unspoken camaraderie between the characters. It’s like the Nostromo crew in the original movie. Did Fede ask you guys to hang out before filming to get that natural chemistry going?
Wu: Fede didn’t really have to push us. The moment we all landed in Budapest, we got a group chat going. As soon as everyone was present, we were like, “Yo, let’s go out, let’s get drinks, let’s have dinner.” And then as soon as we all sat down in one room, we realized, “Oh, okay — this is gonna be really fun because it’s just gonna be us hanging out,” especially for that first act before sh** really goes down. We shot it chronologically, [so] all the excitement of being with each other and being on set and starting filming… all that energy had a perfect home to live in those scenes we got to shoot at the very beginning.
Weiss: You had Ridley Scott, the man who started it all, as a producer on Romulus. Did you get to meet him at any point?
Wu: I met him after we finished filming. I took a business trip to LA and I visited Scott Free. He just so happened to be coming back to the office from a dentist appointment and our other producer from Scott Free, Tom Moran, was showing me around the office and he was like, “Oh! The big man’s coming up the stairs now!” Ridley comes up the stairs and Tom is like, “This is Aileen. She’s in Alien, which you just saw some footage of.” Then Sir Ridley Scott looked at me very intensely and said, “When can I see a cut?” And I was like, “I don’t know. I’m so sorry. I’ll get someone on it right now! Someone get this man a cut!” Then he gave me a fist bump. It was one of those meeting your hero moments and you’re like, “Oh, he’s just another person.” The office is covered in his illustrations and I love drawing. I was just like, “Wow, he’s a real person who loves to draw and really has a brain for visual storytelling; what to do with an image.” That was really fun, meeting him.
Alien: Romulus is now streaming exclusively on Hulu, or else available to rent/ purchase from digital platforms like Vudu and Apple TV.
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