What’s up everybody? You are watching IGN Live. Hey. Wow. Right on.

The hit show Resident Alien asked the question, “What if evil aliens from outer space were living among us?” And right now, looking at the crowd, I believe it. Uh, here to tell me all about the show is the star and creator of Resident Alien. We have Alan Tudyk and Chris Sheridan.

Hi you guys. You two have had such an eventful few days. We had the season 4 premiere. You’re here. How are we feeling now that four is out?

Well, the premiere is out at least. I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Oh, well, we should fix that. How are we feeling now that the show is out? Now that the premiere is out?

Yeah, the premiere. Yeah, we premiered last night. Yeah. Uh, how are you feeling?

I feel great. I mean, it’s a long road. I’ve been working on the season since July. So, to have it finally out there for people to watch is very exciting. I love it.

Yeah. Did you always plan on four seasons or did it evolve as it went along?

I mean, you always hope for as many as they’ll give you. Definitely. Uh, I think in this climate having four seasons is a huge victory. So, we’re thrilled every year we get a chance to do it again because we have so much fun working together, the whole cast, and the show’s working and I think it has a good message. So, uh, I told them already I would do it forever if they give us the chance. So, we’ll see what happens.

Alan, how about you?

Uh, yeah. I mean, we started so long ago. Uh, the first season, I mean, from the pilot, I was in love with this thing. It’s a dramedy, so it’s one hour, but there’s a lot of comedy in it. And uh, because I’m an alien, I can kind of do anything and make it say, “Well, he’s an alien. That’s why he does that.”

So I can kind of— you can kind of see this thing behind and I’m dancing like a freak. There’s no reason for me to dance like that. No reason. There’s no music playing in that scene. Uh, I’m just doing that. And I don’t think there’s any other show where I could just do that.

So, yeah, as long as we can do it.

So, you got to direct two episodes this season. How was that?

It was hard, guys. Directing is hard. Um, as an actor, you just have to know your own, you know, journey. As a director, you have to know every character’s journey.

But the plus side is, uh, you get to work—or I got to work—with everybody who puts a show together and there are so many people. You know, you can say, I mean, there’s a thing called prop—there’s many things, but there’s this one thing called prop show-and-tell.

Right, show-and-tell.

Yeah, so every prop that’s used in the show, in our show, and in every show that you see on TV, somebody has gone around, the director and all the people in production who make it. They pick up every prop:

“Here’s the toothbrush. Is this going to work? No. First of all, this is blue, not red. We said red. And I need one with a gum sensitizer on the end.”

I don’t know what that is.

“Oh, I’ve seen them. They’ve got them at this place. You got to get one. And it needs to be wider. Okay. Next. This is the bell they ring on the bike in that one scene.”

“Oh, yeah. Ring ring. Do you have something louder? That’s not loud enough. Do you have something that’s slower?”

Yeah, I mean everything gets chosen by a group of people and it is a collaborative effort. The actors just show up at the end and dance for some reason.

Shout out to crews, right? Like none of this would happen without them. Just the best teams, just doing all of the thankless work. Thanks to all of you guys.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And Chris does more than anybody because where I was starting as a director was from a script, and then we go from there. He’s starting with a blank page and that’s—yeah, nothing. That’s hard.

So speaking of that, uh, Chris, when you first were developing this show, did you always have Alan in mind or did Harry change once you knew that Alan had been cast in the role?

Harry changed the second Alan auditioned for it. I had in my head what I thought the character was. And then we had a hundred actors before we found Alan come in and try to get the role. And they’re incredible actors and it was never— it was never good enough.

And I started questioning the writing and I think maybe I wrote it wrong. And then Alan came in and did his thing and immediately we knew that’s what the character was.

So this is so much—it’s all like all the little things Alan has added to it. The thought Alan has put into this character is what really has created this character.

I remember in season one, the first time Harry was in bed and he pulled his covers up like this, and he was like this, and I realized it’s because the alien has three fingers. So even in Harry’s human form, Alan made the choice to hold it with just three. I was like, only Alan Tudyk could come up with stuff like that. Incredible.

So, as mentioned, season 4 premiered yesterday. So, we have one other special surprise for everybody here in the audience. We have an exclusive clip from episode two. Let’s check that out.

What the hell?

No, I don’t know where she is.

Oh, orbs. I’m not hiding her. This is broken. I don’t know.

That would be the grays.

Doing what?

Looking for Mrs. Mayor’s baby. The grays love human babies.

They do not know why. You would think they would collect something more useful, like AA batteries or those clips that keep potato chips fresh.

At least Kate doesn’t know where the baby is. Maybe if she can’t tell them, then they’ll stop looking.

They will not stop. That is where the expression “like a gray with a baby” comes from.

But why are we talking about this? We should be talking about something much more important.

Is it you?

Yes. I drove all the way from the moon. I’m tired. I’m thirsty. And neither one of you has offered me their bedroom yet. You’re terrible hosts.

Oh, I can see your bedroom from here. It looks like the couch.

So, seriously, you’re not alien anymore. Like, you’re not strong. You can’t climb buildings. You can’t do—wait, are you ticklish now?

I am not interested in your dumb questions. I’m still an alien. Stop. Damn it. I’m as much an alien as I have always been. I just need real food to get my energy back.

See, [Music] I still love milk just as much as I always have. [Music]

Oh god. I’m not—I feel good now. I’m going to head back to my cabin to kill the mantid.

No. No. No. No. No. Hey. Hey. He will kick your ass. Just sit down and we’ll figure out a plan.

You need to get out of my way or you will feel my alien wrath.

I understand. And you want me to sleep out here on the couch to protect you too? Accept.

---

It’s a good cut. That was great.

Yeah, Alan. I feel like we have to talk about the art of the spit take here because that’s how I feel whenever I ingest milk. So, what job do you get to do spit takes?

I mean, that’s a—that’s a classic. And I love those kinds of jokes. Uh, yeah, I’m surprised there’s just so much milk in there. It just keeps coming out. It just keeps coming.

Yeah. Uh, how many takes did you guys have to do for that? Or was that one and done?

There were a few. The big thing that helped that scene was Alice Wetterlund, who plays Darcy, does the red hair. She said, “You can spit it on me.” That helped because once you see it hit her, you—yeah. Yeah. Get a sense of how nasty it is. We’ve got something to cut to and, you know, it’s not just the action, it’s the reaction, right?

Um, so you have so many different animatronic—I guess is the way I want to phrase that—like, you’ve got the alien which, you know, as you mentioned just sort of acts kind of funny, but, and you can do whatever you want, but you’ve kind of got the same sort of monotonous tone. And then you’ve played so many robots as well.

So like, how does the way you play Harry in your alien form versus the way you would play alien number four in Superman, how do you differentiate those beyond just tonal changes?

That’s a great question. It informed it. Uh, I had—I guess I had done K2SO. Uh, but when I did Sonny for I, Robot, I worked with a voice coach there and we had decided that he spoke correctly, however you would—what was considered correctly. So good enunciation, good vowel sounds, what you learn in theater school basically.

And that is ultimately what Harry learns. He learns from watching TV and really likes Law and Order. So he pulls from there, but it’s—he’s making the vowel sounds. He’s thinking of it phonetically.

You know, he’s from—it’s not, he didn’t only have to learn a language, he had to learn how to make the mouth work. Like his mouth is completely different. Like he had just a tongue and these weird teeth. So he had to learn all of the muscles like a little baby.

Then he learns to speak correctly. So that’s been—I went to theater school and they taught me that, and it’s been really helpful. Uh, that was not something that I ever thought of writing in the script. That was all doing the actor’s process of, in his mind, what would happen in this character.

Whenever I watch a funny clip, I hear you in my head. I went to Juilliard.

All right. So, this last one is for both of you because we’re about to wrap up here. Um, how did your approach to Harry change, both in the writing and the performance, now that he’s human?

Oh, yeah. With the writing, the point was to take Harry to the next level of his observation of humanity and his growth into humanity. And one of the best ways to do that, I thought, was to sort of take the training wheels off and put him in a situation where he doesn’t have his alien energy to fall back on.

But from a writing standpoint, it was trying to write him a little more vulnerable and a little bit more open to emotions and realizing that more is happening to him than had happened previously.

And then the rest of it—again, like, you have this concept in the writing and it’s a bit of a soup, but it’s just the ingredients first. And you sort of throw it at Alan and it goes through that machine and then the brilliance comes out of that, where he takes that and then he figures it out and he figures out what feels real and what feels organic to the character. And he did an incredible job all season doing all the different levels of that in different characters again as well.

So it was—it was a little easier almost. I mean, there’s adjustment, but I could access more emotion, whereas with Harry it’s like there’s a layer that you have to get through to—his emotions are colored by an alien experience. So they’re simpler. He’s childlike in that way.

Whereas even though he hasn’t, these are his first emotions. Well, he’s had emotions creeping in over the seasons. Ever since he’s been on Earth, it’s been a theme. Now he is really struggling with things, or the things that are happening are more impactful because he’s human and he’s experiencing them as a human.

Thank you both so much for your time today. Season 4 of Resident Alien is out right now, so do yourself a favor and go catch up before the darkness of space envelops us all.

Back up—morbid.

We have got tons more IGN Live ahead, so don’t go anywhere.