Category: 5. Entertainment

TOTAH presents Diorama, an exhibition of recent paintings by Alex Sewell. Diorama opens September 5, 2025 and will remain on view through November 1. This is Sewell’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Marking a distinct departure from previous exhibitions, Sewell’s latest body of work takes on a renewed interest in the constructed quality of paintings—both in scale and method. While past works leaned toward intimate, fragmentary scenes, Diorama unveils a more monumental and theatrical sensibility. The porous translucency of Sewell’s brushwork allows viewers to construct their own narratives regarding the tidal shifts happening across each painting. The endgame is to gently navigate dreamlike terrains stippled with clews that draw viewers along.

A painter’s painter, Sewell moves effortlessly between large- and small-scale works, foregrounding painting itself as a medium brimming with unexplored potentials, capable of revealing to different viewers an intimate externalization of their own thoughts, memories, and desires. Whether it’s the panoramic, shadow-soaked landscape of Go back home (2024) or the wonky congeries of objects depicted in Fast car (2023–24), Sewell’s scenes often resemble makeshift bits of paper collaged into place. Alluding to the flatness of childhood illustrations or DIY stage designs, he builds immersive environments—autotelic fictions that nod to the artificiality of their own making.

In Fast car, the graceful patchwork of different styles (alluding to collage, trompe l’oeil realism, and children’s drawing) pours out into a seemingly vast and illimitable blue sky, inviting viewers to look past the objects and listen for indefinable music on the papier-mâché radio dial. The playful disorder of this assemblage is framed by the comedic rigidity of a warped, gilded edge. This same dream logic resurfaces in Go back home, where a ladder emerges from a pit and points toward a silhouetted city beneath the moon—both enticing and inaccessible. The spatial fiction of these works telescopes painting into an invented world with its own repeatable rules.

However recursive or symbolic Sewell’s scenes might seem, their clarity of form resists reduction. These are not puzzles to be solved, but images to dwell on. In Diorama, each picture holds its own. What links them is not narrative or message, but process: a letting-go that yields to painting’s inherent plasticity. They reflect not just how we record the world, but how we continually re-stage it—through memory, through fiction, and through art.

Alex Sewell (b. 1989, Salem, Massachusetts) completed his BFA at MassArt in Boston, Massachusetts, and joined the studios of artists Jeff Koons and Bjarne Melgaard as an assistant sculptor/painter. Sewell’s work is characterized by his use of symbols borrowed from popular, consumer and gaming cultures and his mastery of oil technique. His ability to mimic pixel with oil, or wood grain with fabric weave, sets the stage for a switch between real, imaginative, and digital representations. Sewell has had his work featured alongside Jim Dine’s poetry at Hauser & Wirth, New York. He has exhibited at Blake & Vargas, Berlin, Big Pictures Los Angeles, California, the Museum or Fine Arts Boston, Massachusetts, the Danforth Museum, Massachusetts, the Monmouth Museum, NJ, Freight + Volume, Five Myles, and Spring/Break, New York. His work has been reviewed in Artforum, Hyperallergic, and Artnet, and can be found in the permanent collections of Enterprise Bank, Lowell, MA and Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, Massachusetts, and the National Gallery of Bermuda, among others. Sewell lives and works in New York.

How does one live at the end of the world? Is it possible to envision a world without racism? And what would be required to create such a world?

Minor Music at the End of the World is a stage adaptation in three movements based on writer and scholar Saidiya Hartman’s acclaimed essays, The End of White Supremacy and Litany for Grieving Sisters. The texts draw inspiration from W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Comet, a speculative short story written in the aftermath of the 1918 global pandemic and imagining the end of the world.

The collaboratively developed stage performance explores the possibility of Black life at the end of the world and in the wake of racial capitalism and white supremacy. Against this complex and layered backdrop, Minor Music conveys an ongoing series of catastrophes that converge at this critical inflection point—among others, the arrival of Africans in New York City, the first slave auction in lower Manhattan, the precarity of Black life, global pandemics, and environmental catastrophes that make life seemingly unlivable. In doing so, it provokes a series of penetrating questions about Black life at the end of the world and the new social formations that arise in its wake.

“Minor Music excavates the underlife of New York City, including the history of Dutch slavery, insurance and shipping. New York became a critical financial center of the slave trade and plantation slavery. The remains of this history are inscribed in the landscape of the city. Presenting the world premiere of Minor Music with Hartwig Art Foundation in Amsterdam—New York’s historical sister city—holds deep personal and historical significance for me.” —Saidiya Hartman

Directed by Sarah Benson, Minor Music at the End of the World features a film by Arthur Jafa, lead performances by actor André Holland and actor/sonic movement artist Okwui Okpokwasili, and artistic interventions by artists Precious Okoyomon and Cameron Rowland, under the executive production of Tina Campt and Beatrix Ruf (Director, Hartwig Art Foundation). Together with Hartman, this ensemble of artists transforms her original essays into a site-specific performance in three movements:

Movement I: The End of White Supremacy—Featuring Andre Holland 
Movement II: Dead River—Featuring Okwui Okpokwasili, with Bria Bacon, Audrey Hailes, and AJ Wilmore 
Movement III: The World is Dead—film by Arthur Jafa

“At the heart of Minor Music is a powerful spirit of collective creation—bringing together a constellation of celebrated artists and combining literature, film, installation art, movement and sound into a singular stage experience. Collaborating with Saidiya Hartman and her exceptional team of creators to bring her influential writings to life through this evolving and deeply collaborative process has been an extraordinary journey—one that continues to unfold. Hartwig Art Foundation is honoured to present the world premiere at ITA in Amsterdam.” —Beatrix Ruf, director Hartwig Art Foundation

Amsterdam 750
The years 2024–2025 mark a milestone in the long-standing historical connection between New York and Amsterdam. Four hundred years ago, in 1624, Dutch colonists founded New Amsterdam on the island of Manahahtáanung—the ancestral home of the Lenape people now known as Manhattan. This event led to the displacement and oppression of Indigenous peoples that predates English colonisation.

As Minor Music premieres in Amsterdam this year, the city also commemorates its 750th anniversary—an occasion that invites reflection. The city and its former sister city New Amsterdam share complex and contested histories marked by trade, colonisation and slavery. These histories have profoundly shaped communities and continue to resonate in both metropoles across the Atlantic today.

Background 
Minor Music was initiated by a staged reading of Hartman’s The End of White Supremacy by André Holland at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, which later evolved into a multidisciplinary performance and film project. Developed with the support of The Princeton Collabatorium for Radical Aesthetics and artists Precious Okoyomon, Okwui Okpokwasili, Arthur Jafa, the project was commissioned by Hartwig Art Foundation with workshops and performances in Ostia, Italy and The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in New York. It culminated in an invited rehearsal at BAM in 2024 and will premiere in Amsterdam in October 2025 with new material.

Tickets available here

 

Context program

Performance credits (Amsterdam world premiere)

Performers
André Holland, Lead Performer / Okwui Okpokwasili, Lead Performer / Bria Bacon, Movement Artist / Audrey Hailes, Movement Artist / AJ Wilmore, Movement Artist

Creative
Saidiya Hartman, Writer / Sarah Benson, Director / Mimi Lien, Scenic Designer / Camilla Dely and Celeste Jennings, Costume Designers / Stacey Derosier and Jane Cox, Lighting Designers / Josh Higgason, Live Camera Designer / Stan Mathabane, Sound Designer

Collaborating artists
Arthur Jafa, Film and Video Artist / Precious Okoyomon, Installation Artist / Peter Born, Sound Artist—Dead River / Cameron Rowland, Attendant of the Archive

Production
RR Sigel, Creative Producer / Kasson Marroquin, Production Stage Manager / Dante Green, Associate Director / Maciej Lewandowski, Production Manager / Attilio Rigotti and Emi Grady-Willis, Camera Operators / Taylor Williams, Casting Director / Brian Freeland, Consulting Production Manager

Tina Campt, Executive Producer / Beatrix Ruf, Executive Producer

Pelumi Adejumo, Dutch Script Translator / Tessa van Dooren, Copy Editor / Rita Ouedraogo, Cultural Consultant 

Production Residency Support provided by BAM

Minor Music is commissioned and presented by Hartwig Art Foundation, with the world-premiere in Amsterdam on October 3-5, 2025, realized in collaboration with Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (ITA).

For complete credits please consult www.hartwigartfoundation.nl / www.ita.nl.

The Ukrainian film-maker Alexander Rodnyansky was once at the very centre of Russia’s cultural life. Over two decades he ran one of Russia’s biggest media conglomerates, produced some of the most celebrated films in recent Russian history – including the Oscar nominees Leviathan and Loveless – and helped bring Russian cinema to international prominence.

But since the invasion of Ukraine, Rodnyansky said, he has witnessed a huge shift in Russian cinema. “The most popular genre in Russian cinema today is fairytales,” the 64-year-old told the Guardian. “They adapt all the stories we grew up with. There’s no single social drama, no movie reflecting life during the war.

“The only source of financing is the state. If you want to make a movie about the war itself, the only option is propaganda. Movies about ‘Nazi Ukrainians’ killing decent Russians, about the Russian army entering Ukraine to save the people of Donbas from these fascists and nationalists. It’s the most stupid bullshit you can ever see.”

Rodnyansky’s comments emphasise a recent trend of lavish adaptations of folk tales and children’s stories becoming runaway hits in Russia. In 2023, Cheburashka, a children’s book adaptation, earned more than 6.5bn rubles (about £60m) at the domestic box office, becoming the highest-grossing Russian film ever.

The film-maker’s new documentary, Notes of a True Criminal, premiering in Venice on Wednesday, rejects that fantasy, opting instead for a deeply personal meditation on Ukraine’s history, the ongoing fallout from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and how these events have shaped his family across generations.

It is his first documentary in more than 30 years and what he calls “the most personal film of my life”.

“It’s so personal that I decided to fund it on my own, on a very small budget. In 40, 50 years it can be a video diary for my kids and grandkids. It’s not a political movie, or an urgent report on what’s going on in Ukraine. I wanted to study the human cost of the war,” he said.

The film is told through a series of vignettes, including footage from Ukrainian soldiers (some still alive, some dead), family videos, and clips from historical wars and tragedies including Chornobyl. Its title comes directly from Rodnyansky’s own recent ordeal.

Last year, the film-maker was sentenced in absentia by a Moscow court to eight and a half years in prison for spreading “fake news” about the Russian army. Russia’s justice ministry declared him a “foreign agent”.

For a man who spent much of his career inside the Russian establishment, the ruling was a personal rupture and a political inevitability.

“It’s been quite an experience for me,” he said. “I never had a Russian passport and citizenship. Somehow I felt it was not right, because I had my Ukrainian sentiment and identity. But at the same time I was in love with Russian film history and culture, I was shaped by Russian literature. I had amazing friends in Moscow.

“I’ve [since] lost the connection with some of them who pretend this life is normal, who don’t speak out.”

Two days after the invasion started, Rodnyansky said, a letter written by the Russian defence minister to the culture minister “demanded to eradicate the participation of President Zelenskyy and myself in the Russian cultural agenda”.

“I never knew I was a part of Russian cultural agenda,” he said. “The next day, my wife and I packed our cases and left our home.”

Though he makes light of his sentence – “it’s a very cinematic sentence,” he joked, citing Fellini’s masterpiece 8½ – he said the repercussions were serious.

“It’s part of their strategy of intimidation of people who live in Russia. It also makes me think twice before travelling. I don’t go to countries with close ties to Russia.”

The director said he was wary of recent diplomacy. Of Donald Trump’s summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska this month, he said: “Ukrainians went absolutely crazy over this footage of Putin on the red carpet. A lot of Ukrainians want the war to end, but they don’t trust Trump to end it in a satisfying way. There’s a line between compromise and capitulation, and capitulation is unacceptable.”

The war has reshaped relationships between Ukrainians and Russians, he said. “Ukrainians are traumatised. Most don’t have the emotional resources to judge between good and bad Russians. They believe every single Russian is morally responsible. But there are a lot of Russians who are supportive of Ukraine. More than a million left Russia when the war started, and many criticise the Kremlin.”

Last month, dozens of Ukrainian writers and artists urged the UK’s Royal Ballet and Opera to drop the Russian opera singer Anna Netrebko from its new London season, calling her a “longtime symbol of cultural propaganda” for the Russian government. Should she and other Russian artists be boycotted?

“We need to separate people who support Putin from those who speak out against him,” Rodnyansky said. “There are plenty of amazing Russian cultural figures who have strongly opposed Putin for years. Netrebko supported Putin in 2014, but as far as I know she condemned the war afterwards. People can change their opinions.

“Even during the second world war, everyone knew the difference between [Erich Maria] Remarque or Thomas Mann and German cultural figures supporting the Nazis.”

High Potential returns to ABC with Season 2 on September 16 at 10 p.m. ET.

Starring Kaitlin Olson, the crime drama follows Morgan Gillroy, a single mother with an unconventional knack for solving crimes.

Olson stars alongside Daniel Sunjata (Adam Karadec), Javicia Leslie (Daphne Forrester), Deniz Akdeniz (Oz), Amirah J (Ava Gillroy), Matthew Lamb (Elliot Radovic) and Judy Reyes (Selena Soto).

RELATED: ABC Fall Premiere Dates: ‘9-1-1’ Franchise, ‘High Potential’, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, ‘Dancing’ & More

The second season of High Potential adds Steve Howey as a series regular playing the precinct’s new captain Jesse Wagner. Jesse is a savvy political animal who knows how to wear an expensive suit and oozes effortless charm. Besides a guy who can launch a million fundraisers with his smile, he has disruptor tenacity and likes thinking outside the box just like their all-star consultant Morgan (Olson). He has a way of putting himself right in the middle of the action… whether he’s wanted there or not.

RELATED: ‘9-1-1: Nashville’ Cast: First-Look Photos Of ABC Spinoff Series

Season 2 Episode Release Guide

Episode 201 — “Pawns” (September 16): While working tirelessly to shield her family from the Game Maker’s threats, another crime drags Morgan back into his game and the LAPD must decide whether to trust her instincts before the next move turns fatal.

Episode 202 — “Checkmate” (September 23): As the Major Crimes team desperately seek answers amidst a string of unresolved crimes, Morgan suspects the Game Maker is responsible. Meanwhile, Daphne and Oz set out to find Roman, and Elliot prepares a surprise act for his school’s talent show.

RELATED: ‘The Real Housewives Of Potomac’ Season 10 Cast Photos & Premiere Date Set At Bravo

Episode 203 — “Eleven Minutes” (September 30): When a man with a troubled past is killed under mysterious circumstances, Morgan and the LAPD uncover a tragic motive behind his death. Meanwhile, Morgan opens up to Ava about her father, forcing Ava to confront truths she isn’t ready to face.

Scroll through the photo gallery below to see images of the second season of High Potential.

Cardi B has been cleared of assaulting a security guard by scratching her with her fingernails, with a Los Angeles jury deliberating for less than an hour to bring an end to a colourful civil trial.

Emani Ellis had alleged that the Grammy-winning rapper cut her cheek with a three-inch (7.5cm) fingernail and spat on her outside an obstetrician’s office in 2018.

The jury took just under an hour to clear the rapper, whose real name is Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar, of the allegations of assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and false imprisonment.

Outside the Alhambra courthouse, Cardi B thanked her lawyers, media and fans and denied again that she had ever touched Ellis.

“Let’s just put this behind,” she said. “But I’m giving a warning: I am not that celeb you gonna sue and you think is going to settle. Especially when I am super, completely innocent.

“I know I’ve got a little reputation but I swear to god I am innocent,” she added, to laughter from the media.

The civil trial revolved around an obstetrician appointment Cardi B attended when she was four months pregnant with her first child in 2018. The office had closed to other patients for the day to shield her privacy as her pregnancy was not then public knowledge.

The rapper claimed Ellis, who was a security guard for the building, had followed her up to the office on the fifth floor, said her name to someone on the phone and appeared to be filming her, all of which made her fear her pregnancy would be revealed, leading to what the rapper described as only a “verbal fight”.

Ellis, who lost her job after the encounter, claimed Cardi B had also scratched her face with a fake nail, which resulted in a scar that required cosmetic surgery. She testified that she had been left humiliated and traumatised.

Ellis was seeking damages including medical expenses, compensation for emotional and physical suffering and lost wages, along with punitive damages.

Cardi B claimed on the stand that she was being sued for $24m but Ellis’s attorney said in closing arguments that it was up to the jury to decide a dollar amount.

Many of Cardi B’s responses during her testimony went viral, including when she described Ellis as “security-heavy”. When asked by Ellis’s attorney if she called Ellis “fat”, Cardi B replied: “No. I was calling her a bitch.”

A significant chunk of time was dedicated to the rapper’s rhinestone-decorated acrylic nails. When Cardi B was asked by Ellis’s attorney whether she was physically able to scratch someone at the time of the incident, the performer replied: “But I didn’t because I had a baby inside me.”

The attorney then asked: “Are you disabled? Yes or no?”

“At that moment, when you’re pregnant, I’m very disabled. Do you want me to tell you things I can’t do?” Cardi B said, prompting laughter in the courtroom.

The rapper denied that she or Ellis touched one another but acknowledged that their argument had become heated, recounting much of the swearing the two women had exchanged. She said while that they were chest-to-chest at one point, the fight never became physical.

“She couldn’t get a scratch from me because I didn’t touch her,” Cardi B said.

When Ellis’s attorney asked her if she had been angry, Cardi B replied: “Yes I was angry! Because I’m pregnant! And this girl’s about to fucking beat my ass!”

Both David Finke, the doctor Cardi B was seeing on the day, and Tierra Malcolm, the office receptionist who broke up the argument, gave testimony that mostly supported Cardi B’s account, saying they had seen no physical fight.

Asked to characterise the argument, Malcolm said she wasn’t sure if she could swear in court.

“We’ve heard just about everything so far, so it’s OK,” Judge Ian C Fusselman said, to laughter from the courtroom.

With so many superheroes, hope is on the horizon. Graphic by Abby Ayre. 

HARRISON PRYOR | STAFF REPORTER | hrpryor@butler.edu

“Film Fanatics” explores Hollywood’s recent releases, cherished classics and everything in between. These thought-provoking reviews invite fresh perspectives and weigh whether a film deserves attention — or if it’s best left in the past. Read on to find out what our writers think of this week’s film. 

It is no secret that the superhero movie industry has struggled these past few years. Marvel focused more on quantity over quality, and DC has been trying its best to follow the cinematic universe formula. Both have had the rare floating hit in a sea of flops, but fans have been largely dissatisfied with the state of their favorite comic book characters.

That all changed this summer.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been rearing up for the Multiverse Saga’s grand finale with “Thunderbolts*” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps”. Consequently, superhero buffs have been wild with speculation about reboots and revivals. Meanwhile, “Superman” successfully reset the DC Extended Universe as the DC Universe, paving the way for a more comic-accurate film franchise.

“Thunderbolts*”

Superhero is a loose term when it comes to the Thunderbolts. The begrudging team of anti-heroes is forced together by the mysterious Valentina Allegra de Fontaine — portrayed by Julia Louis-Dreyfus — whose past caught up to herself and everyone else. The film marked the genre’s continued revival with a box office pull of over $382 million on a budget of $180 million.

“Thunderbolts*” pulls together sharp quips, well-choreographed action and a gut-wrenching found family trope to make a genuinely fun movie. Each character — despite being a clear stand-in for an original Avenger — is unique and compelling, but the team’s name itself is a reminder of the larger franchise at work.

That asterisk is no mistake. It spells out the film’s hidden subtitle — “*The New Avengers”. The big reveal of the team’s new name shot the movie’s menagerie of morally grey misfits into the big leagues and primed them for the overcrowded team-up at the end of Phase Six of the MCU. “Thunderbolts*” may be good, but its story is still a pawn in the MCU’s messy, one-sided chess game.

“Superman”

Sophomore middle/secondary education major Lorelei Guenther was so impressed with “Superman” that her faith in superhero movies — new and old — was revitalized.

“I really liked it,” Guenther said. “Afterwards, I went back and watched the old [1978] Superman movie with Christopher Reeve. I felt like superhero movies were kind of back in a way.”

The big screen debut of James Gunn’s new DC Universe aided in the resurgence of not only superhero movies, but DC movies specifically. “Superman” blasted into theaters on a budget of $225 million and made $600 million, sparking high hopes for the franchise’s future.

“Superman” follows a new version of the big blue boy scout — portrayed by David Corenswet — as he tries his best to bring peace to a chaotic world that loves and hates him in equal measure. The film introduces a world already full of super-powered metahumans, bringing to life both iconic and lesser-known characters from the comics.

Guenther expressed that skipping the origin and picking up in the middle of Superman’s journey helped the movie’s pace.

“Going back and watching the old movie with Christopher Reeve, it had a very slow start,” Guenther said. “We see all the stuff with his parents on Krypton … [and] on the Kent farm, [but] we don’t see much of him as Superman. I think it was really cool to see him as Superman for the whole movie. I do kind of wish it focused more on him as Clark Kent, but maybe that will come in the future.”

“The Fantastic Four: First Steps”

The irony is not lost that it took four movies to get the Fantastic Four right.

“First Steps” recognized that the team’s origin is done and tired, and opted — like “Superman” — to pick up their journey in the middle. The family of super-powered adventurers is forced to face a threat like no other when the world-eating Galactus — portrayed by Ralph Ineson — demands a steep price in exchange for Earth’s survival.

Junior entrepreneurship and innovation major Ben Adler believes that Galactus is too big a threat to waste on one movie.

“I don’t think they used [Galactus] to his full potential,” Adler said. “He could have been a Thanos-level threat and could have been the big bad for this phase … I still think [Doctor] Doom is fine, but there’s a lot of controversy around that.”

Though the cast of “First Steps” is confirmed to appear in “Avengers: Doomsday”, the film itself is singular. “First Steps” is set in a universe entirely separate from the MCU, which allowed the story to ignore the rest of Marvel and focus solely on the Fantastic Four and their world. This choice kept the movie from being bloated with cameos and fan service, though not entirely.

Following the trend of lucrative superhero films, “First Steps” made almost $500 million on a budget of $200 million.

General reception

Senior middle/secondary education major Margaret Smith appreciated the themes of unity seen throughout all three movies.

“A big thing [in these movies] is hope, helping each other and being connected with other people, whether they are friends or family,” Smith said. “[In] Thunderbolts, a big theme was mental health. [At] the [end] they defeated the villain with the power of friendship, and that is really awesome.”

In spite of the so-called superhero fatigue, super-powered hits have been rocking theaters all year. It seems that superheroes have had a thundering, super, fantastic, very good summer.

Related

[This story contains spoilers from Alien: Earth‘s fifth episode, “In Space, No One…”]

Alien: Earth gave franchise fans an unexpected treat with its fifth episode: A mini-Alien movie that feels like the FX drama took Ridley Scott‘s 1979 original film and re-imagined its core elements as a unique one-hour story.

Aptly titled “In Space, No One…” (playing off the original film’s famous marketing tagline, “In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream”), the flashback episode showed what happened aboard the ill-fated USCSS Maginot that caused its dangerous creatures to escape and the ship to crash into Earth.

With the ship’s interior sets as a near replica of those from the first film’s ship, Nostromo, the action played like an alternate universe version of the decades-old film that we’d never seen before. The sequence also contained a twist that upended many of the audience’s assumptions about the previous episodes and was inspired by the antics of a certain tech billionaire.

“This allowed me — in the middle of trying to innovate what [the Alien franchise could be as a series] — to also pick up the gauntlet for classic Alien to say, ‘We could do classic Alien and do it as well as anyone,’” Hawley said. “But what’s interesting to me at the same time is adding all these new elements, and putting the creatures in this thematic context. It’s the number of elements at play that make it fun to me. It’s like by the time the xenomorph enters the story, you’re six tragedies deep with these other creatures. Then the xenomorph arrives and it just escalates.”

Hawley continued, “When you think about the last 10 minutes of James Cameron‘s movie [Aliens], there’s no other word for it than ‘thrilling.’ And my hope was that by putting these elements together and with all these creatures — the sabotage and getting to the bridge and then the chief engineer with The Eye — and now the xenomorph is there, that it just escalates in a way that I think ends up feeling a little crazy. You leave the predictable Alien world and are like, ‘I do not know what is going to happen next.’”

One key moment is the revelation that Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) was behind the sabotage of the Maginot in an effort to get the ship to crash into his territory so he could steal the creatures. It’s a perhaps controversial twist and I suggest to Hawley that — for a famed smartest-geek-alive genius — this seems like a really dumb plan that should never have worked. But it turns out that the plan’s reckless idiocy was kind of the point.

“I don’t look at our tech billionaires and think these guys are orchestrating some master plan,” Hawley replies. “I think you have a lot of ADHD billionaires with impulse control issues. And we always look to impose a certain logic on our fiction that doesn’t apply to real life. For me, it’s a way to tie everything together and as the show plays out in the rest of the season, we find that the boy genius is not a terribly thoughtful and calculating guy. He has all these ideas. He chases all of them at the same time. And he has never failed. So he thinks failure is impossible. He’s trying to launch this immortality product, so why would he do this other stuff? He thinks, ‘Oh, I could do everything.’”

Hawley then suggested the characterization is a comment on Elon Musk (he doesn’t say the billionaire’s name, but his description seems to clearly point to the Tesla/SpaceX/The Boring Company/X mogul as an inspiration. “It’s a statement, on some level, about the hubris we’re seeing around us by people who think they can go to space, re-invent travel, drill in the earth and enter politics,” he said. “They’re doing all of these at the same time when none of them are necessarily being done well. They’re just all being done a lot.”

Throughout the episode, the viewer is also wondering the deal with one character in particular: Andy Yu’s crew member Teng, who spied on a fellow crew member in her sleep and seemed rather unpleasant, and then was taken out by the xenomorph. So was he just a creepy human then?

“It’s always open to interpretation, and that’s the fun of that franchise — who is an android and who isn’t?” Hawley said. “At a certain point, you start to question everybody. But yeah, for me, he’s a creepy dude.”

Hawley added that the show’s casting drew from his showrunning experiences on Fargo.

“When I realized that I wanted to do that flashback episode, selfishly I was like, ‘Well, I have to [direct] that one; I don’t want to hand that one off,’” Hawley said. “Part of that was the casting. [The security officer cyborg Morrow, played by Babou Ceesay] obviously carries the show, but you need that cast to be memorable instantly. A lot of it for me was being over in Thailand like, ‘Well, who can I call that will come?’ So I called Richa Moorjani. I called Karen Aldridge from season four of Fargo. I called Andy Yu from season three of Fargo. And the great Michael Smiley and so many great UK actors. They all pop and resonate. So much of what I do in these big ensemble shows is constantly building new worlds and you can’t really assign that to another director. The specificity of it, I felt like I needed to do.”

Alien: Earth releases new episodes Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET and 5 p.m. PT on FX and Hulu.

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “In Space, No One…,” Season 1, Episode 5 of “Alien: Earth,” now streaming on Hulu.

In Episode 5 of the first season of “Alien: Earth” — written and directed by show creator Noah Hawley — we get a new view into the character of Morrow.

As played by British actor Babou Ceesay, 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 — a cyborg — but little more than that.

In the episode “In Space, No One…,” we get a clearer sense of Morrow. (We also get plenty of horror — that implied “…Can Hear You Scream” from the movie’s 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 — organic beings that may hold the key to preventing fates like his daughter’s in the future — are subject to a plot: Fellow crew member Petrovich (Enzo Cilenti) plans to hand them over to one of the world’s governing corporate CEOs Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) in exchange for participation in Kavalier’s pilot program of embedding human consciousness into synthetic hybrid bodies. (Kavalier’s Prodigy Corporation and the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, familiar from the big-screen “Alien” 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.)

As security officer of the Maginot, Morrow abandons his post to kill the traitor — 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’s confronted by a Xenomorph newly let loose on the ship: It’s too late for any unaltered human to avoid this collision, but Morrow has ensured, for now, that the ship’s precious alien life won’t fall directly into an oligarch’s hands. 

Variety spoke to Ceesay via Zoom in June; the actor was in Gambia, where he was directing a Wolof-language production of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.” 

The ways in which Morrow is more than human must have made for an interesting acting challenge.

It was. I did some research on cyborgs and found this guy named Neil, who basically had a cyborg attachment added to his head. He’s an artist, and he’s 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’s talking about being more than human. He feels like he’s the next level up. He went from someone shy to someone who has his place in the world. 

How did Noah Hawley pitch this episode to you? 

While 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’d been discussing about Morrow having this warmer side. As unbelievable as that sounds, I thought, No, he has another side to him where there’s almost a moral compass.

That element of him was what I needed to cling on to, this idea that he’s still human and moral. And he sees that side of himself in two different ways. He sees it as useful — he’ll pull it up, and he can connect with people if he needs to. But, really, deep down, he thinks it’s a weakness. He’s ashamed that he has a part of him like that. He’s learned to be cold.

Right.

The fact that he was someone with palsy who’d been abandoned by his mother — 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’d better make this work. We’re investing in you. So make it work. If they take it away from you, what have you got left? 

He’s always trying to be as efficient as possible in what he’s trying to do — to be as machinelike as possible. 

Knowing you shot the series largely in sequence, was it a challenge to shoot the earlier episodes and not give away Morrow’s complicated motivations?

I knew there’s 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’re 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’re 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’re more on the fence. It’s not like, “OK, this guy is mission-driven and insane and mean. It’s more like, I don’t know how I feel about him now.”

How did the aspect of Morrow’s family history affect the performance, especially given that for much of the show, you’re engaging with other children who might remind him of his daughter’s death? 

When 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’d use her letters, or they’d use a baby picture. Imagine, in that scene, I’m looking at that — it goes to another level. Even talking about it now affects me. 

On another note, I love how quintessentially “Alien” the start of Episode 5 is — crew members are just kind of hanging out, smoking cigarettes, eating, and it feels very quotidian and workaday. They’re people on a job. It reminded me of scenes from the original “Alien,” on the Nostromo. 

One hundred percent. We were all aware of it. We had our moment of feeling giddy when you first walk on — oh my goodness, I’m on the Nostromo. It’s real. [The “Alien: Earth” 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 — 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’re speaking over each other. 

Did the episode stand out to you in the long, long experience of the production? How long did it take to shoot? 

Five weeks and a bit. It was intense. I didn’t see my kids much during that one. But Ep. 5 was special. Because you’re essentially shooting an “Alien” movie in the middle of this “Alien” series. 

I’m curious what Noah shares about the whole season. Do you have a sense of what future seasons might entail? 

[Coming into shooting,] I had an idea of the first season. What’s good about Noah is that you really do get a good sense of everything that’s 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 — you make a choice, and you’re 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’s going to be epic. 

This interview has been edited and condensed.