Resident Alien Chris Sheridan Interview | Season 2

Automatically transcribed; may contain errors.

hi chris how are you today great thanks so when you thought of this concept how did you think you were going to make a difference from other alien type things sorry my headphone just thought it's a really good question i mean i you know i i was originally sent to comics uh that peter hogan and stephen parkhouse did we're these masters of storytelling and art um they're both incredible and those comics were great we sent those at the end of 2015 is when this journey started and uh i didn't have a plan to make it different than any other alien thing but i did know that i had a a different sort of set of a different skill set going into it than probably most people doing an alien thing which is my background is more character based and less sci-fi based i was always a sci-fi fan and loved ray bradbury and um growing up and you know i always love that stuff but i but i'm more in the character world and building characters and so i my plan was to approach it like a real world situation and not just do a science fiction show not an alien um my original thought was from my standpoint it wouldn't work well unless if you remove the alien from the show it's still a great show so i developed it in such a way to give a lot of these characters that were in the book a background that weren't in the comic book and really making three-dimensional characters with backgrounds i added you know asta and jimmy was not in the comic and the whole j connection was not in the comic darcy wasn't in the comic i added her as a friend so i i wanted to create a world that was fun to be in anyway and then i figured if i could do that then dropping an alien into the middle of it would be just an extra layer on top of everything that already exists that will add a layer of sort of excitement and little high tension to the whole thing but also we'll have something real for the alien to experience as he's trying to figure out what human nature is like the the deep sort of character development of the other characters helps i think harry on his journey of learning humanity because he's he's bouncing off of real situations on a television show that were that were invested in as opposed to if they were just two-dimensional people we didn't really know you wouldn't really get as much why harry's feeling the way he does about asta um he she has to really be going through something that we relate to that we feel for her in order for us to buy that harry feels it as well as an alien so that was the plan going in i did not set out to do anything different i just wanted to do it through my lens and i knew that coming from a character standpoint and also coming you know from a comedy standpoint would probably add something that is different than typical alien shows so i just you know at that stage and at this stage of my career it's you develop something that you love and maybe they'll make it maybe they won't but you just do something that's different and it's more fun that way anyway and as it turns out they liked it and then we made it they did and so did critics absolutely yeah was alan always your mindset for harry or did that was that a process that was a huge process i did not i did not know i mean i had i actually did not know what the character should be until alan auditioned for it i had a different sense in my mind of what it might be we looked at over a hundred actors from l.a from europe you know we looked at a ton of actors and allen was one of the last ones that came in and it like i said wasn't until he performed it where i said that's that's it i mean a lot of people and by the way these are all great actors that came in um but i part of it was my fault because i just didn't know what i was looking i didn't i thought i knew what i was looking for but then when they came in i was like i don't know if that's it and it didn't click for me they were either too maybe a leading man and too comfortable in their own skin and not alien enough or or the opposite they were too alien and too robotic you know what alan brought when he came in was this incredible sense of of of being outside the box a little bit being a little off-center but having a very natural inherent goodness in him which alan the person has and it comes through in the character so it's what alan played that no one else played was first of all he was incredibly funny but he there was a an emotion in there trying to come out there was a connection in there that he was trying to figure things out and he was he was trying to understand and uh there was a childlike quality in there from him which is what the character needed and i don't think i ever realized it until he came in yeah i think he plays the part extremely well um in terms of season two um are we gonna get more between austin and harry is are they gonna are they gonna butt heads even more than they i feel like they did in season one yeah they're gonna butt heads i mean they're they're on a journey together they're trying to figure each other out i think when harry comes back at the top of season two i think us first feeling is i thought i was done with this you know what i mean like her life was going along she figured and suddenly she's got to take care of this alien so i think she goes she starts there but i think she i think she realizes as the season goes on that that having this presence in her life is helping her life um i think it's helping her learn about herself i think it's helping her learn about human nature because she's seeing that growth through his eyes it's sort of what you when you have a kid you know yeah exactly so it really plays a little bit metaphorically as you know as if she were able to raise jay what she would have learned if she would have been able to keep jay which which was sort of taken away from her by her own doing and now she has this opportunity to live live it through harry and i think there's i think what she finds in harry is an ally and and a someone that she can you know mother a little bit um and i think she likes that feeling you know there's a reason she's a nurse i think she likes yes i do see her as the mother hen type and when i was talking with allison um and sarah and it was it was kind of like their juxtaposition why are they such good friends because one's the very mothering type and then you know darcy's a risk taker so how did their relationship develop because you said that they were not original characters how did you mold them and make them friends it's a great question i mean when i originally wrote darcy i wrote her as a 21 year old sort of bright-eyed hopeful you know just finished you know got her skiing but two years ago you know and he's starting a new life in a new town and you know spent her childhood training so i never really had fun and now is out to have fun and i and i did it um as a friend for us to sort of balance out asta's darkness because i knew austin you know jimmy and jay was gonna have a lot of difficulties getting to the season emotionally and i wanted someone there to balance that out for her and to bring out a little bit more positivity in her and i thought of it as darcy as this sort of young full of hope with her whole life ahead of her so now in the casting process um i wasn't able to find that but but alice came in and was so funny yeah and so good at it and so good at improv and so endearing that it became a different thing i mean alice obviously isn't doesn't play you know 21 and hopeful and you know bright-eyed but but she's so funny that even though she has a darker sense of humor you know she now is playing you know what i made them you know friends from high school and darcy's life has sort of fallen apart and it's sort of dark like asta's but she drives through it with humor and and what i thought would bring out asta's lighter side through a hopefulness in darcy it's now darcy's sense of humor that brings out asta's sense of humor and that the connection can only be there when your friends since kids since childhood comes out and it gives us to the strength she didn't have before so and even that i didn't know until in the first two episodes of season one and you saw in the pilot darcy was barely in it and season two she's not i mean in episode two she's in there just sort of goes up goes on a date with harry but it wasn't until till episode three of season one where they go to that high school party together and they show up at harry's cabin to use the bathroom and darcy's hitting on him where it clicked and i realized what it was and they had so much chemistry together dancing around the fire that's the episode to me where not only did that relationship click but who darcy was clicked and how she felt serious click for me um and alice plays it so well and they're so so put together that it's really fun to watch well we love these characters and i cannot wait to see how season two continues or evolves