The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub sits down with the cast of
Alien: Romulus
at San Diego Comic-Con 2024.
In Fede Álvarez’s direct sequel, a new crew stumbles upon a derelict ship harboring a hive of deadly aliens.
Cailee Spaeny, Isabela Merced, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, and Spike Fearn discuss joining the iconic franchise, the honor of dying by Xenomorph, the use of practical effects on set, Comic-Con, and more.

“All other priorities are rescinded.” Alien: Romulus is invading theaters soon, and to celebrate director Fede Álvarez’s entry into the Alien franchise, the cast hit Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con this year. While there, Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the pleasure of sitting down with the doomed crew of this direct sequel to find out what it’s like to meet your untimely end at the hands of a Xenomorph.

“You want to die well,” star Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla) tells us as her castmates, David Jonsson (Industry), Isabela Merced (Madame Web), Archie Renaux (Shadow and Bone), and Spike Fearn (Aftersun), regale us with the horrors from set. This is the group of space colonizers who make a fateful decision to scavenge an abandoned ship—Rain (Spaeny), Andy (Jonsson), Kay (Merced), Tyler (Renaux), Bjorn (Fearn), and Navarro, played by Aileen Wu in their feature debut. While searching for a way out of their situation, they stumble across a hive of one of the deadliest known life forms and must fight to survive.

Check out the full conversation in the video above or the transcript below, where the cast discusses cementing their place in iconic cinema history and what it’s like to die by Xenomorphs and Facehuggers. They also talk about practical effects on set, why filming in chronological order was both a blessing and a curse, the score and stunning cinematography, and being at Comic-Con.

Alien: Romulus While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.Release Date August 16, 2024 Director Fede Alvarez Writers Fede Alvarez , Rodo Sayagues , Dan O’Bannon , Ronald Shusett Distributor(s) 20th Century Franchise(s) Alien Expand

To Die by Your (Xenomorph) Side Is Such a Heavenly Way To Die
Image via 20th Century Studios

COLLIDER: The thing about Alien movies is we all know basically all of you but one is gonna die. I know this going in, the audience knows it going in. So I wanna play a game. Let’s pretend all of you die in the movie, so whoever does survive, we won’t know. When you were reading the script, or Fede was talking to you, and you find out you’re gonna die in an Alien movie, what is that reaction like? What is it like to actually film something like that?

CAILEE SPAENY: There’s an art to dying in front of a camera. It’s harder than it looks to die on screen.

ARCHIE RENAUX: The Xenomorph and Facehugger are iconic things, so to be able to say I’m one of the people that have—not saying I am—but to be able to say that, there are not many people that will be able to say that as part of a bit of history.

SPAENY: You want to die well.

RENAUX: Yeah, you want to have an iconic death.

ISABELA MERCED: Also tragic, kind of sexy.

SPAENY: Do you do eyes open or eyes closed?

MERCED: There’s a little bit of sexiness behind death.

RENAUX: There are all different ways a Xenomorph can kill.

Related Unsurprisingly, Fede Álvarez Isn’t Cutting Away from Xenomorph Kills in ‘Alien: Romulus’ Cailee Spaeny, Isabela Merced, Archie Renaux, and more star in the latest title to come from the sci-fi horror franchise.

‘Alien: Romulus’ Shot in Chronological Order
“People start to die, so that makes it hard.”

So you see the shooting schedule in front of you; what is the day you have circled in terms of, “I cannot wait to film this,” and what’s the day circled in terms of, “How the F are we gonna film this?”

DAVID JONSSON: Every day on set was, “How the F are we gonna film this?” One thing that we were very lucky to do was shoot it all in chronological order, which means that one day of shooting will inform the next day of shooting will inform the next day of shooting, and so on. That was a real gift because it means that you can make choices and then see them through to the end. But we didn’t know how we were going to do a lot of it.

SPAENY: I think as the filming progressed, it got more and more intense, and it got darker. At the top of the shooting, we’re all together, we’re all enjoying each other’s company, and we’re all having conversations.

MERCED: I agree.

JONSSON: People start to die, so that makes it hard.

RENAUX: I think that the exciting days were when you checked when the first Xenomorph was gonna be on set. Because we knew that they were building them and we’d seen photos and stuff, but to actually be in the presence of one was a day that I think we were all very much looking forward to.

MERCED: You’ll see in the last 20 minutes of the movie, that’s what I feared the most about filming. You think it’s over then something crazy happens, and I think that was what I definitely dreaded getting right. I wanted to get it right. And hopefully I did.

The ‘Alien: Romulus Crew’ Want to Bring Back Practical Effects
“Some of our favorite films are built on that… Jurassic Park or Tremors or The Thing.”
Image via 20th Century Studios

One of the things that Fede has talked to me about and shown me is the practical nature, the miniatures, the physical stuff, and the lack of CGI, which is fucking awesome. Talk a little bit about that kind of environment, like sets, practical, and how it just adds so much realism to something like this.

SPAENY: Some of our favorite films are built on that. When I think about Jurassic Park or Tremors or The Thing, I think it makes such a difference to have that on screen. There’s a real celebration of filmmaking through meeting these people from the Stan Winston studio who had worked on Aliens.

I think it’s a sort of lost art that we’re craving as film lovers to bring back, and that’s definitely what Fede felt.

Obviously, it made such a difference for us as actors to have the physical thing right there, but it was also a real joy to meet those guys and to hear the folklore behind the scenes.

MERCED: They worked on so many of the Alien films. One of the guys doing the Facehuggers worked on, like, five of them. There’s just a lot of humanism behind it. There are humans working on it. You can’t replicate that unless you have human hands doing it.

RENAUX: It’s a treat. We all feel very, very lucky, and we hope that in our careers, later on down the line, hopefully, there’ll be more of these practical effects. I think it’s kind of coming back around, a bit like fashion. Like Star Wars goes CG and then comes back and starts using more practical effects, and hopefully it carries on this way because it was very, very enjoyable.

I’m not sure if any of you have seen the original Battlestar Galactica from the ‘70s, but they used these models, and if you look at it now it still looks real because they were shooting models, and it’s just the anamorphic nature. It’s just fantastic, in case you’ve never seen Battlestar. A little before your time.

Related Fede Álvarez Called Up the ‘Aliens’ Effects Team for ‘Alien: Romulus’ “They were in their early twenties when they made ‘Aliens,’ […] And now we had them at the top of their game.”

So, we’re at Comic-Con. I love Comic-Con because there’s a lot of cool stuff on the convention floor. I don’t know if you guys have had any time to walk the floor, but if you could, is there anything that you actually collect? It doesn’t have to be comic books or Comic-Con stuff. I’m just curious because a lot of people here collect stuff.

RENAUX: I’ve got a lightsaber.

MERCED: Sick. Me too.

SPAENY: You do love Star Wars.

RENAUX: I do. I love Star Wars. I would like to have like a hilt. Like, have a little look around; there are lots of hilts, so something that’s easy to take with me in my suitcase. Maybe something like that.

MERCED: Like an authentic one.

RENAUX: My kid, she’s three, four in October, but she loves Spider-Man at the moment, so I might try and get her some Spider-Man stuff.

JONSSON: That’s so sweet, man. You’ve gotta do it. I really like anime, and Dragon Ball Z, I just love. I remember I had a couple of Dragon Ball Z Goku figurines and stuff like that that was quite cool. I might do some shopping.

You should walk on the floor.

JONSSON: I want to, we just have had no time.

MERCED: Do they have Avatar: The Last Airbender?

They have everything.

MERCED: I want to do that. I wanna meet the voice actors. I already know one of them, the guy who plays Sokka, Jack De Sena. I actually worked with him. And then I have an Appa hat. That’s like my biggest flex is that I worked with Sokka.

Related The 10 Most Important Things We Learned at SDCC 2024 Some of these surprises were Deadcool.

You’ve talked a little too much in the back.

SPIKE FEARN: I’m a big fan of T-shirts, so if there are any good T-shirts, I’ll pick them up for sure.

JONSSON: Like a graphic tee?

MERCED: Yeah, you do like a graphic tee.

SPAENY: I think I just wanna go down. I just wanna see what that’s like.

JONSSON: You’re not gonna buy anything?

SPAENY: Maybe. Maybe if something speaks to me. I just wanna meet the people. Being at Hall H yesterday, there was no way to sort of prepare myself to be in front of 6,000 Alien fans.

JONSSON: It was crazy.

RENAUX: You should get yourself a Xenomorph. I got, quite a while ago, a little Xenomorph figure that I just have on the shelf.

FEARN: You got that from Comic-Con?

RENAUX: No, I bought it from a comic book shop in Newcastle.

FEARN: There’s a great shop in Camden. The guy’s got everything to do with Alien.

I’ve actually been to Camden, and they do have a lot of cool stuff there. For people in America, it’s like Melrose the way it used to be. Camden’s cool.

FEARN: It’s a very, very cool shop. I got a Facehugger from there. It’s on my bed now. [Laughs]

Related Prepare For ‘Alien: Romulus’ With New Scream-Worthy Collection From NECA The Alien franchise returns to theaters next month.

The ‘Alien: Romulus’ Stars Become a Part of Cinema History

So you read the script, you’re on set, and you know what you’re making, but what was it actually like watching it for the first time? Like your expectations versus what it actually was?

SPAENY: For me, my imagination is terrible. [Laughs] When I imagine when we zoom out of the spaceship, and we’re in space, it’s all like stick figures and terrible scribbled-out stars in my head. So, when you see it all come together, you’re like, “Oh, wow, it’s a real movie.” It cements that we now forever play a part in this iconic franchise.

JONSSON: I agree. It’s that. It’s like a real film.

SPAENY: You don’t really let that sink in when you’re filming. I think you’re trying to sort of protect yourself, and it’s not until it’s finished that you go, “Well, that’s that.”

RENAUX: Or when you hear all the sound effects and the stuff of the ship.

SPAENY: Also, I feel like we haven’t talked enough today about how incredible the film looks, and what Galo [Olivares] did.

MERCED: The rings, the planets.

SPAENY: It looks gorgeous.

JONSSON: Also, the score is amazing, as well. Benjamin Wallfisch did the score and it’s absolutely stunning. It takes you back to, like, the first Star Wars, the first Alien. It’s amazing.

Alien: Romulus releases in US theaters on August 16. For more on the film, here’s our interview with director Fede Alvarez.

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