{"id":110747,"date":"2025-09-03T05:03:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T05:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/110747\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T05:03:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T05:03:07","slug":"babou-ceesay-on-episode-5s-morrow-flashback-twist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/110747\/","title":{"rendered":"Babou Ceesay on Episode 5’s Morrow Flashback Twist"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This story contains spoilers for \u201cIn Space, No One\u2026,\u201d Season 1, Episode 5 of \u201cAlien: Earth<\/a>,\u201d now streaming on Hulu.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Episode 5 of the first season of \u201cAlien: Earth\u201d \u2014 written and directed by show creator Noah Hawley \u2014 we get a new view into the character of Morrow.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs played by British actor Babou Ceesay<\/a>, Morrow has to this point been something of a cipher: We know that he was piloting the research vessel Maginot when it crash-landed on our planet, and that he is an enhanced human being \u2014 a cyborg \u2014 but little more than that.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the episode \u201cIn Space, No One\u2026,\u201d we get a clearer sense of Morrow. (We also get plenty of horror \u2014 that implied \u201c\u2026Can Hear You Scream\u201d from the movie\u2019s original tagline in the episode title comes through loud and clear.) In a flashback to the Maginot before the vessel crashed, we see Morrow as a man in grief, recollecting his daughter, who died of an incurable disease. He discovers that the alien specimens he holds so dear \u2014 organic beings that may hold the key to preventing fates like his daughter\u2019s in the future \u2014 are subject to a plot: Fellow crew member Petrovich (Enzo Cilenti) plans to hand them over to one of the world\u2019s governing corporate CEOs Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) in exchange for participation in Kavalier\u2019s pilot program of embedding human consciousness into synthetic hybrid bodies. (Kavalier\u2019s Prodigy Corporation and the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, familiar from the big-screen \u201cAlien\u201d franchise, are among the groups locked in battle for the future of the planet, which will also involve controlling what extraterrestrial life crash-lands here.)<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Patrick Brown\/FX<\/p>\n

\n\tAs security officer of the Maginot, Morrow abandons his post to kill the traitor \u2014 allowing the ship to continue its collision course into Earth. Once he returns to command, Morrow ignores the screams of another crew member as she\u2019s confronted by a Xenomorph newly let loose on the ship: It\u2019s too late for any unaltered human to avoid this collision, but Morrow has ensured, for now, that the ship\u2019s precious alien life won\u2019t fall directly into an oligarch\u2019s hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tVariety spoke to Ceesay via Zoom in June; the actor was in Gambia, where he was directing a Wolof-language production of Arthur Miller\u2019s \u201cThe Crucible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tThe ways in which Morrow is more than human must have made for an interesting acting challenge.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was. I did some research on cyborgs and found this guy named Neil, who basically had a cyborg attachment added to his head. He\u2019s an artist, and he\u2019s color-blind, so he had something added to the base of his skull at the back that comes out to the front. What it does is a sort of sound response. He hears color. Watching his interview, he\u2019s talking about being more than human. He feels like he\u2019s the next level up. He went from someone shy to someone who has his place in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tHow did Noah Hawley pitch this episode to you?\u00a0\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile he was explaining some of those contradictions that came out in it in terms of what happened with his daughter, it suddenly made sense of some of the stuff we\u2019d been discussing about Morrow having this warmer side. As unbelievable as that sounds, I thought, No, he has another side to him where there\u2019s almost a moral compass.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat element of him was what I needed to cling on to, this idea that he\u2019s still human and moral. And he sees that side of himself in two different ways. He sees it as useful \u2014 he\u2019ll pull it up, and he can connect with people if he needs to. But, really, deep down, he thinks it\u2019s a weakness. He\u2019s ashamed that he has a part of him like that. He\u2019s learned to be cold.<\/p>\n

\t\tRight.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe fact that he was someone with palsy who\u2019d been abandoned by his mother \u2014 that taught him something about people, that people will only lean toward you if you are useful. Imagine the first time they put this billion-dollar piece of equipment on him. I imagine the nurse would have said to him, Look, you\u2019d better make this work. We\u2019re investing in you. So make it work. If they take it away from you, what have you got left?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s always trying to be as efficient as possible in what he\u2019s trying to do \u2014 to be as machinelike as possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tKnowing you shot the series largely in sequence, was it a challenge to shoot the earlier episodes and not give away Morrow\u2019s complicated motivations?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI knew there\u2019s something human about this guy that I wanted to cover up as much as possible until the moment. People make up their minds about you. They\u2019re like, OK, this is what you are, as quickly as possible, just so that they can put you in a box and figure out how you\u2019re going to behave. I love the unpredictability that Noah brings to it. My hope is that when people see Episode 5 and see some of the motivations, they\u2019re more on the fence. It\u2019s not like, \u201cOK, this guy is mission-driven and insane and mean. It\u2019s more like, I don\u2019t know how I feel about him now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Patrick Brown\/FX<\/p>\n

\t\tHow did the aspect of Morrow\u2019s family history affect the performance, especially given that for much of the show, you\u2019re engaging with other children who might remind him of his daughter\u2019s death?\u00a0\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen I found out that he had a daughter and that she had died in the way that she had, it struck a chord much deeper in me. The actress playing my daughter is my real daughter. We were shooting, and they were looking for someone to play my daughter, and my daughter was out there [in Thailand] with me going to school, with my son and my wife. Noah was like, what would you think if they\u2019d use her letters, or they\u2019d use a baby picture. Imagine, in that scene, I\u2019m looking at that \u2014 it goes to another level. Even talking about it now affects me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tOn another note, I love how quintessentially \u201cAlien\u201d the start of Episode 5 is \u2014 crew members are just kind of hanging out, smoking cigarettes, eating, and it feels very quotidian and workaday. They\u2019re people on a job. It reminded me of scenes from the original \u201cAlien,\u201d on the Nostromo.\u00a0\t<\/p>\n

\n\tOne hundred percent. We were all aware of it. We had our moment of feeling giddy when you first walk on \u2014 oh my goodness, I\u2019m on the Nostromo. It\u2019s real. [The \u201cAlien: Earth\u201d ship is the Maginot, but it was designed to look like the Nostromo.] Everyone there was a fan. Having that first moment, getting into that comfort zone \u2014 as a group, I call us the Ep Fivers, we knew we had to cross a lot of boundaries very quickly and get comfortable with each other so we could have it that way where they\u2019re speaking over each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tDid the episode stand out to you in the long, long experience of the production? How long did it take to shoot?\u00a0\t<\/p>\n

\n\tFive weeks and a bit. It was intense. I didn\u2019t see my kids much during that one. But Ep. 5 was special. Because you\u2019re essentially shooting an \u201cAlien\u201d movie in the middle of this \u201cAlien\u201d series.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tI\u2019m curious what Noah shares about the whole season. Do you have a sense of what future seasons might entail?\u00a0\t<\/p>\n

\n\t[Coming into shooting,] I had an idea of the first season. What\u2019s good about Noah is that you really do get a good sense of everything that\u2019s going on, so you can pitch your character properly. And sometimes, when they keep these things secret, it just makes it that much harder to play the role \u2014 you make a choice, and you\u2019re stuck with it later. I have an idea of what happens at the top of Season 2, should we get a second season. And it\u2019s going to be epic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThis interview has been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This story contains spoilers for \u201cIn Space, No One\u2026,\u201d Season 1, Episode 5 of \u201cAlien: Earth,\u201d now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[8905,48882,96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-110747","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-alien-earth","9":"tag-babou-ceesay","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}