When he was 5, Alan Tudyk, inspired by the Muppets, burst through the swinging doors of a cowboy-themed restaurant in Texas and growled, “I'm Bad Bart and I'm here for some burgers!” The place went crazy, he remembers. “My mother was 'Oh my God' embarrassed, but the whole audience” – Tudyk recovers – “the whole restaurant Serious. Even then she couldn't keep it hidden; He was trying to make people laugh.”
Lounging on a huge pumpkin-colored couch in the Beachwood Canyon home he shares with his choreographer wife, Charissa, Raisin, 14, and Clara, 12, Tudyk reflects on his journey from a wired kid to “Resident Alien.” star. The Syfy series, introduced in 2019, features Tudyk as the pizza-loving, profanity-spewing main character who lands in rural America on a mission to destroy humanity. He kills small-town doctor Harry Vanderspeigle, shapeshifts into his body, learns English by watching “Law & Order,” and tries to fit in with the charming, quirky citizens of Patience, Colorado.
At the beginning, Tudyk says, “Harry knows nothing about being human and loves the fact that he's smarter than everyone. He is also very arrogant.” At the end of season 1, Harry shed his first tear after his only friend, Nurse Asta (Sara Tomko), caught him in a lie. In season 2, Harry resists the temptation to eat his own child, the alien-human hybrid Bridget, “because he's delicious” and defies orders to return to his home planet now that he feels a connection to the neighbors. earthlings of him.
In the third season of “Resident Alien,” which premiered in February, her Harry Vanderspeigle falls in love.
Not with a human. It would be too exaggerated.
But with Heather (Edi Patterson). She is a 7-foot-tall alien bird who emerges from an intergalactic portal to deliver Harry a summons and quickly assumes human form. Romantic slapstick follows, as Tudyk displays an array of absurdist comedy chops that once earned him a stint in the Broadway production of “Spamalot.” He smells Heather's hair and passes out with pleasure. He sings horrible folk songs. And when Harry kisses Heather, her tongue hangs out of the side of her mouth moving back and forth like a blind worm.
Alan Tudyk stars in Syfy's “Resident Alien” and was last cast in the series.
(Ethan Benavidez / For The Times)
Tudyk says: “When you play with someone great like Edi, you're lucky in those moments. In one take I said, “Please chew some sunflower seeds and spit them into my mouth.” “The thing about my tongue sticking out the side of my mouth goes back to my show 'Con Man,' where a girl refuses to let me kiss her except on the cheek.”
Finally, Heather breaks Harry's heart. She throws a tantrum, channeling Gene Wilder's whisper-to-scream speech in “Young Frankenstein.” Tudyk says: “There's a scene where Gene Wilder says [calm voice] “In science, we accept our failures with quiet dignity and grace.” Then he loses control, punches the monster and screams 'I DON'T WANT TO LIVE!' His natural level of conversation had a twinge of hysteria where he would always be HALF STEP FROM SCREAMING! Alan Arkin had the same thing.”
Although he's mostly in human form in “Resident Alien,” Alan Tudyk sometimes goes completely alien, right, especially when he falls in love with a bird-like creature.
(SYFY/SYFY)
Harry shares some additional creative DNA with a previous TV alien. “I loved Robin Williams in 'Mork and Mindy,'” Tudyk says. “He even had the 'Mork and Mindy' suspenders. “Robin showed a lot of kids that there was a lot of humor in the voices and the characters.” Mel Brooks, as well as prodigious voice actor Mel Blanc and Looney Tunes, also influenced the young Tudyk. “There I learned the mechanics of humor, the assembly of jokes, voices and comedy,” he says. “For me, it all came together.”
Encouraged by his high school teacher to give up a career in hotel management and pursue acting, Tudyk attended Juilliard. There he lost his Texas accent and learned to speak in the elegant mid-Atlantic manner. But Tudyk says something was missing from the school's famously rigorous curriculum: comedy. “I went to the school principal and complained, 'Please throw me a life preserver!'”
Instructor Christopher Bayes gave him more than he expected. “We called him Angry Clown because he seemed so surly,” Tudyk says. “I would pick five of us: 'Stand there in front of your classmates, say 'hello' and make everyone laugh.' If everyone doesn't laugh, go back to the end of the line and do it again.' That became a real lesson: if you tried something really big trying to be funny, it was never funny, but if you found something true in the moment, it would move people. “That class saved me.”
Alan Tudyk knew he wanted to make people laugh since he was 5 years old.
(Ethan Benavidez / For The Times)
Tudyk left Juilliard before graduating and waited tables until 1997, when she appeared in the off-Broadway comedy “Bunny Bunny,” in which she played 25 characters. The tour de force earned Tudyk a Clarence Derwent Award (given by Broadway's Actors' Equity Assn.) as Most Promising Male of the Year. Movies followed, including “A Knight's Tale,” “28 Days Later” and “Dodgeball,” along with roles as droids in “I Robot” and “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” in which he played droids.
Between live-action roles, Tudyk broke into animation voicing a dodo in 2002's “Ice Age.” A few years later he played the quirky King Candy in “Wreck-It Ralph.” That led to animated hits like “Frozen,” “Zootopia” and “Moana,” for which Tudyk clucked a “chicken under duress” character named Heihei. “I definitely didn't pursue voice work,” Tudyk says. “It just happened. I used to think, 'I've fooled everyone,' but now I've done it enough to feel like I know what I'm doing in the booth. I walk in and they're like, 'This is what it looks like.' the character, what do you want to do?' To me, a chicken and Hamlet are the same thing,” he says, laughing. “Everyone has wants and needs, just different languages.”
In 2015, after a stint with Nathan Fillion on “Firefly,” Tudyk created the web comedy series “Con Man,” about embittered actor Wray Nerely, who reluctantly attends sci-fi conventions. Although “Con Man” earned Tudyk an Emmy nomination for short-form actor, he didn't sign on with “Resident Alien” creator Chris Sheridan in 2019, when the former “Family Guy” writer and producer was struggling. for finding a protagonist for his series. , loosely based on the comic by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse.
Alan Tudyk stars alongside Sara Tomko in “Resident Alien” on Syfy.
(James Dittiger/Syfy)
Tudyk says, “I don't know why I was so late to the party, but I was the last one in the cast. After more than 100 people [auditioned]I went in and did this [autopsy] Scene where Harry sees a dead body. [flat voice] 'Oh, a corpse like in 'Law and Order.' Ca-chang.' They responded very positively. 'Yeah! You!' Everything happened very quickly and within a week I was in Vancouver.”
Netflix picked up the first seasons of “Resident Alien.” Syfy has yet to renew it for a fourth season, “but we're hopeful,” Tudyk says. “Shows like this are not just a job. Harry Vanderspeigle has a big space in my heart, like my left ventricle. He will camp there for the rest of time.”
