Chiwetel Ejiofor

OF ‘THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH’ ON SHOWTIME

Are you comfortable with playing your Alien character in “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” Faraday, being so much more skilled at virtually everything?

We decided just in the nature of the show that he would have some trajectory ... that is, he would be faster than us, faster and quicker in his alacrity and ability to understand and learn language and communicate, but not sort of instantaneous. There would be a kind of journey for him, and that’s what we are witnessing. In fact, I think we go on to witness that evolution through the show as he develops more and more, also with human nuance – with interpersonal dynamics and understandings. He actually becomes eventually quite rich at being able to mimic and then sort of internalize, I think, so his development as a human in a way is multifaceted and is a sort of central part of the story.

You’re actually playing several characters in one in “The Man Who Fell to Earth.” How was that challenge for you?

That’s one of the things that was really exciting about the part and about this project, is just the variety of it – how much there is, how many personas he puts on through the journey. I think it was isolating all of those moments and figuring out what we were going to do, then piecing it together, working with dialect coaches and working with other actors. If I was imitating a person specifically, then I would be working with them, then an outside dialect coach and all of this stuff in order to just methodically build all of these moments.

We had a great and elongated kind of rolling rehearsal period through the seven months that we were shooting, so that we could always get together and talk and go through scenes and isolate what was needed for each bit. It was challenging, and it was great fun, and it was exciting to do. And it was working with really great people, and I was thrilled with it.