How Jonathan Ajayi Grew Young for <em>Alien: Earth</em>

Hopefully, we all learned as children to never do certain things in polite company. Don't talk with mouthfuls of food, for instance. But for 29-year-old British actor Jonathan Ajayi, who stars in the buzzy sci-fi horror series Alien: Earth on FX and Hulu, such indecorous manners got him the role of a lifetime.

In Alien: Earth, set two years before the 1979 sci-fi classic Alien, the mega-corporation Prodigy is on the brink of achieving—and profiting from—immortality. The first batch of "immortal" humans are the Lost Boys: terminally ill children whose consciousness are uploaded into artificial, adult-sized bodies. These powerful, literally overgrown kids wind up on the frontlines of humanity's first contact with aliens after a ship containing unknown specimens crashes in southeast Asia. Among the Lost Boys is Smee (Peter Pan allusions run wild in the show), played with aplomb by Ajayi.

Recalling his audition for the series, Ajayi tells me how he won over the show's casting directors by not simply playing a child, but behaving like one. "We had a scene in the show where I'm giving Slightly a flavor strip," says Ajayi. ("Flavor strips" are basically snacks for synthetics.) It's kids eating snacks, basically, which gave Ajayi an idea. "I was like, Children talk with their mouths full. I bought a can of Tango for my Zoom meeting with [casting director] Kate Rose James. I said the lines, I took a sip, and I shesh, 'Hey broh, dhu yuu wan shum aysh kreem?'" Replicating that moment for me over Zoom, Ajayi lets out a wide smile, and I can picture carbonated orange liquid leaking from his teeth. "Kate put her hands on her chest like, 'He's so sweet.' It was so much fun."

29-year-old Jonathan Ajayi stars in Alien: Earth as Smee, an enthusiastic "Lost Boy" who spends the show’s seventh episode going through a difficult time.

If it seems like Ajayi has come out as suddenly as a chestburster, well, he has. Hailing from West London as a 2018 graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, Ayaji has just a handful of credits to his name: ten episodes of the British series Noughts + Crosses, six episodes of Vigil, and a supporting role in Wonder Woman 1984 (playing the assistant to Pedro Pascal's Maxwell Lord). Alien: Earth is Ajayi's breakout performance; his endearing Smee is a showcase for the actor's budding wealth of talent. From the way Smee laughs with his whole body to the way he darts his eyes away from scary adults, the character truly appears like a ten-year-old child—not a man in his late twenties portraying one.

Ajayi says he learned this physicality partly from just being out in the world and observing families. "As soon as I got offered the role, every child in the world suddenly had a spotlight on them," the actor says. "I'd be going through daily life and I would notice things. Children refusing to cross the road with their parents, and what the kid would do with their arms when they have a tantrum. Their emotions are so big, but their bodies don't know how to articulate them. It comes forward all weird and scattered, and I allowed that stuff to inspire me."

Below, Ajayi details the psychological traumas that haunt Smee, the nuances of playing a child in an adult shell, and how Alien: Earth (almost literally) took him back to his younger days.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Jonathan Ajayi (right), with Adarsh Gourav as Slightly (left), in Alien: Earth.

What were you like when you were ten years old?

I felt misunderstood. I didn't feel seen. I felt invisible among other kids. At the same time I couldn't sit still. My uncles called me "Engine Head" because I was running around steaming about, falling into things like a train. My mum would tell me I was the kind of kid that you blink and I've disappeared. Gone and made friends. She took me to the park one time, she looked away for one second, and I was at the other end. I interrupted a game of cricket. They were teaching me how to bat. I told them all my name and my mum's name. [Laughs.] I was that kind of kid, and I'm still like that as an adult.

Tell me your own grasp of Smee. Who is Smee at a glance?

Smee is a rare example of a character starting out with everything they want. [Showrunner] Noah [Hawley] gave all of us a lot of one-on-one time [with him] to understand the backstory of our character's lives pre-transition. Based on what I was given, Smee struggles with ADHD. He was a misunderstood child, and felt alone because of it. When he becomes a Lost Boy at Neverland, all that loneliness he's ever experienced, all that misunderstanding, all that sickness that's isolated him, gets solved. What happens then is [him going], I need to keep this dream alive. How do I turn these strangers into my nearest and dearest? A lot of Smee's enthusiasm comes from that place of going, I finally have the family I've always wanted.

What about Smee's life did you learn from Noah?

He suffers from severe ADHD, and his mum was manic depressive. He was struggling in school, getting sent home to a mum dealing with her own battles. I played with the idea that Smee wasn't able to find stability. He had to be fluid emotionally; he had to learn how to self-correct to positivity because he didn't know if he was going to come home to a mum who was depressed. Some moments it's like, "My mum's hugging me and telling me I'm beautiful and I'm getting sweets for dinner," and the next it's like, "The lights are off at home, curtains closed, and if I make too much noise I'm in trouble. I'm really alone."

I looked into how children cope growing up in broken homes. Something that happens with children [in those environments] is that the home they create—whether it's good or bad—for them, it has to be [a place of] love. Teachers and friends are a 9-to-5, but parents are 24 hours a day. So they make whatever they're going through okay. As a child you have to be funny. You learn to put a smile on that parent's face, and that translates into the way you deal with friends. That's how you deal with difficulty. [Smee] learned positivity is the best medicine. That relates to Peter Pan. How do you fly? You think happy thoughts.

Ajayi sees a lot of his younger self in Smee, right down to some of his lines in the script being things he said verbatim. (Ajayi clarifies it is by sheer coincidence.)

What was the collaborative process like with Noah Hawley?

Noah's mind is fast. He has to think in very strong detail about so many things. You would assume that would mean some things get left half-baked. But there was never a moment I came to Noah and the fullness of his genius, even his kindness, wasn't on display. We were in Thailand and there was a period that I found a bit difficult. Nothing deep—I just missed home in London. Noah gave me beautiful advice. He was like, "If some days have to be about laundry, some days are about laundry." He's very involved in a beautiful way, and open to ideas and creativity.

What did your preparation to play Smee as a literal "big kid" look like?

I worked with one of my teachers from drama school, James Kerr. We did Grotowski puppet work, which is using your body and treating it like a mannequin. Over months I would read the scripts and he would ask me, "What's showing up for you about Smee?" I'd talk about his mum or his relationships with each Lost Boy. My body would start to do things. He would then go, "I want you to imagine Smee has entered the room. Let your imagination do the work."

I remember the first time I "met" Smee in this context. In my imagination he sprinted into the room and dived like Superman onto a sofa and pulled out a GameBoy. It was so vivid. James would then say, "Now act this. How does he sit on chairs? How does his chest rise and fall in his breathing? How does he listen?" Every weird idiosyncrasy that makes a human body, he encouraged me to visualize, then represent what I'm seeing physically. That's the puppet. I'm observing on the inside and allowing it to take over my mannerisms. It was a profound experience. We were getting rewrites around that time, and there were some things we would discover in those rooms that would show up in the script. It was a profound synchronization of imagination and the body.

Overseeing the Lost Boys is Kirsch, a cold android played by Timothy Olyphant (center) who effectively babysits the Lost Boys on behalf of their trillionaire creator, Boy Kavalier, played by Samuel Blenkin.

How has Alien: Earth reconnected you to your ten-year-old self?

I am so connected to what I was like as a child. I'm a big kid. I had a lot of conversations with my mum about the naughty stuff I used to do in school. Maybe the weirdest thing I did [for Alien: Earth] was at my childhood park—I go for late-night walks so I can reflect and think. I went to the park at two in the morning, sat on the swings, and closed my eyes. I tried to remember what it felt like to believe that I could swing so hard I would go around. Every child thinks they can, right? I remember doing it and, on my voice memo on my phone, just started speaking a stream of consciousness. I started crying. I was like, "It's beautiful to believe anything's possible."

That led me to realize Smee's worldview, which is that children are raised in a "Please and Thank You" society. They've not been hurt yet. You're taught that those are the rules of the world, even though grown-ups live in a completely different world. Their answers come through simplicity, because we're given the lie that life is simple. Just simplifying my intelligence was the way in.

How much was "Kid Jonathan" like Smee?

I was so similar, man. When I got the audition script, I started welling up because I was like, "I was that kid." Line for line, there are things [in the script] I remember hearing when I was nine, ten years old. Actors always say, "I feel like this part was for me." I don't think the part was for me. It could be for anybody. But I think this really represented me. It made me feel seen.

What is Smee's relationship to Slightly? Out of everyone in the Lost Boys, why does Smee attach himself to Slightly in particular?

Growing up around people who struggle with mental health gives you a strong sense of people. Because Smee saw things as a child that other children wouldn't understand, he can recognize what's missing. I suppose that is his superpower. When he looks at Slightly, he sees someone looking for a brother. Like, He misses his family. I'll be his family! Smee's that kind of person. He sees someone looking for a brother and he knows what it takes to make someone feel like they have family because he knows what it feels like not to. Smee's a beautiful character.

Episode 7 is a hard one for Smee. What's Smee feeling all throughout this episode?

He is being forced to grow up. Noah and I played with the idea that, when a child experiences trauma early on, that youth is destroyed. In this episode he was teetering on the edge of losing his innocence at the hands of another child. That's important because Slightly, as much as he's doing wrong, he's ignorant to a degree. He learns that "please" and "thank you" don't work. He's learning for the first time that people lie. The inner nuances of betrayal and friendship is a lot for a child. You said he wasn't going to be hurt, now he's dead, and I don't even know what that is. I haven't heard that word since before the Lost Boys.

Smee has everything he wants and he'll keep it at all costs. But through Slightly's actions, he has to decide whether it's worth it or not. He's people-pleasing Slightly through this episode, and it's crushing and killing him inside. But for the sake of brotherhood and being a Lost Boy, he's thinking happy thoughts and completely abandoning his actual moral compass. In the scene when we're walking down the corridor, I ask Slightly if the body is still there. That's the only scene I did in the series where I wasn't playing a child. The chestburst moment killed the innocence. Something has been turned off. This is the loss of innocence we're watching in Smee.

What do you think is in store for Smee in the future of Alien: Earth?

Independence. A reckoning with other people and their loyalty. After something like this you start to realize, "Maybe I'm different." Or, "Is there something wrong with me or is there something wrong with them?" The rest of the season is going to pose a lot of questions for Smee, and I don't know if he is old enough to answer them yet. That's the loss of innocence. You're now thinking grown-up thoughts. You can't fly anymore.