Latest / Kyle Meredith With... / Alien: Earth Cast on AI Anxiety, Dead-Eye Acting, and the Humanity Beneath the Horror

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Alien: Earth Cast on AI Anxiety, Dead-Eye Acting, and the Humanity Beneath the Horror · Kyle Meredith With...

0:00
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[SPEAKER_06]: and welcome to another edition of Kyle Meredith with.
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[SPEAKER_06]: It's the interview series presented by WFPK at WFPK.org Consequence in the Consequence Podcast Network.
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1:02
[SPEAKER_06]: We've had some great guest drop by lately Amy Burg.
1:05
[SPEAKER_06]: She directed the new documentary.
1:07
[SPEAKER_06]: It's never over Jeff Buckley.
1:10
[SPEAKER_06]: Did a rewind back to my interviews with They Might Be Giants.
1:12
[SPEAKER_06]: We talked with Lucy and if you can and about Chief of War on Apple TV+.
1:16
[SPEAKER_06]: The four actors who make up the Gilmore boys in Happy Gilmore II, Kyle Nuichek, the director of Happy Gilmore II, Michael Clifford of Five Seconds of Summer, Caroline Polichek, Allison Goldfrapp,
1:28
[SPEAKER_06]: been folds the cast of zombies for on Disney Plus, WetLig, René Elise Goalsbury, just an example of what you get when you subscribe to the Kyle Meredith with podcast.
1:41
[SPEAKER_06]: And that's me, Kyle Meredith.
1:43
[SPEAKER_06]: Today we're going to be talking to the cast and creators of Alien Earth.
1:49
[SPEAKER_06]: Alien Earth is landed.
1:50
[SPEAKER_06]: And the cast is opening up about the deeper layers behind FX's latest expansion of the Alien Universe.
1:57
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm going to talk with showrunner Noah Holly, breakdown how the show evolved from Ridley Scott's original themes into something more reflective of today's
2:05
[SPEAKER_06]: AI anxieties and technological obsessions.
2:09
[SPEAKER_06]: I'll talk with Star City Chandler about the challenge of portraying Windy, a hybrid with human consciousness, while Timothy Olifant, Samuel Blinken, Babu C. Say, an Alex Lawther that'll explore how their character is robotic and emotional balance.
2:25
[SPEAKER_06]: Dead eye acting, we have some fun with that.
2:27
[SPEAKER_06]: And the trauma, the trauma that everyone seems to go through.
2:31
[SPEAKER_06]: There's also a healthy amount of praise for the soundtrack coming from myself.
2:35
[SPEAKER_06]: You'll hear in this series tool, Metallica, Jane's Addiction, Nina Simone, and maybe there was a robot dancing that didn't make the final cuts.
2:44
[SPEAKER_06]: Maybe from one Mr. Timothy Oliveint that we'll get to talk about.
2:49
[SPEAKER_06]: It's sci-fi with soul and the xenomorph is only the beginning.
2:53
[SPEAKER_06]: We're talking about alien Earth on FX.
2:57
[SPEAKER_06]: It's Kyle Meredith with the cast and creators of Alien Earth.
3:01
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, there.
3:02
[SPEAKER_10]: Hey, Kyle from Concecancell and Kentucky.
3:04
[SPEAKER_10]: There you go.
3:05
[SPEAKER_02]: There you go.
3:05
[SPEAKER_10]: Concecancell and Kentucky.
3:06
[SPEAKER_10]: Nice.
3:07
[SPEAKER_10]: I just always appreciate it if the situation where I can get it.
3:10
[SPEAKER_02]: It's such a nerd.
3:11
[SPEAKER_02]: It's amazing.
3:13
[SPEAKER_06]: Congrats on the series, y'all.
3:15
[SPEAKER_06]: I haven't stopped thinking about it since I've been watching this.
3:18
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, great to hear.
3:19
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you.
3:19
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you.
3:20
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
3:21
[SPEAKER_06]: And I've been thinking about why I'm thinking about it.
3:24
[SPEAKER_06]: And and and no, I'll start with this question too.
3:27
[SPEAKER_06]: Leading into that is this something where you came up with the story once you knew what you were working on or did some of these pieces maybe exist beforehand.
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[SPEAKER_03]: No, no, this was an idea that came up when FX said, do you have any ideas for Alien?
3:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I thought about this idea, which I don't know that anyone else would have had this idea when they were asked to think about Alien, but, you know, for my brain and thinking about the elements and the themes of Ridley's movie and James Cameron's movie, this is where my head went.
4:01
[SPEAKER_06]: And I guess, so the reason why I'm bringing that up is like, I realized going into this junket today that I don't have any questions about the monster.
4:08
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, there's, the monster is amazing, right?
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[SPEAKER_06]: But there's so much story in here beyond the monster.
4:15
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, where does the story come from then?
4:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, the story comes from the themes of the film.
4:22
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's, I mean, it's really born in this, in this moment in the communication room where Sigourney Weaver leans back,
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[SPEAKER_03]: and Ian Holmes there, and it's revealed that he's an android.
4:33
[SPEAKER_03]: We thought he was British, but it turns out he's an android.
4:39
[SPEAKER_03]: We realize that these characters are trapped between the primordial past, these monsters, the food chain, and this AI future that they created, they thought it was going to help them, but now it's turning on them.
4:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And I thought, well, that's really interesting dilemma to base a show around.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Because if it had just been about running away from monsters, what are you going to do?
5:05
[SPEAKER_03]: How many hours can you do that for?
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[SPEAKER_03]: If you can take the monsters out of it, and they're still a show, now I think you've got somewhere to go.
5:12
[SPEAKER_04]: It was really interesting at a chance to watch the first two films after we completed the series, and it was striking how intimately related they are.
5:24
[SPEAKER_04]: But that Noah was able to take a lot of the themes and ideas that are deeply rooted in the franchise and utilize this long form television format to expand them and explore them to much greater depth and to a much more sort of complex extent than you can in a two-hour film.
5:43
[SPEAKER_06]: And David, to continue on that, too, because I think someone said, you don't have to worry about universe building as much.
5:52
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, does this, do you use it as a cautionary tale or is it just a tale of story?
5:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I mean, I think what Noah's done here is you can encounter this series on a number of levels, which I think the great stories sort of provide for.
6:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, part of the thing I've discovered and repeated watching as we've been working on, it is that that horror takes on all different variety of meanings here.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, you can have the literal horror with the creatures.
6:23
[SPEAKER_04]: There is the
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[SPEAKER_04]: more existential horror of looking at what is happening within this world that has some very close correlations to some of the things we're experiencing in our own sort of technological and sort of natural world disruptions that we're reading about and experiencing each day in our own lives.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But I think the fact that Noah was able to take this world into an earthbound environment.
6:54
[SPEAKER_04]: You can fear for the xenomorph getting out and how does he run rampant on the continents.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But then you look at the cyborg, you look at the at the synth, you look at this new formulation of hybrid.
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[SPEAKER_04]: and you start having some really extraordinary recognition moments.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So it's an entertainment that has, I think, as you mentioned, some extraordinary resonance, depending upon where you want to go with it.
7:20
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a show that asks a lot of questions at the right time, right?
7:24
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, Sydney, I don't know if you want to start.
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[SPEAKER_06]: Is it trying to say something or is it starting a conversation?
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[SPEAKER_06]: Is it a warning or how do you see it?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it's starting multiple conversations.
7:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's the beauty of Noah's writing and something that you can also find in the original film.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't give you answers.
7:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't feed the audience answers.
7:53
[SPEAKER_02]: It asks questions.
7:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I was able to finally see
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[SPEAKER_02]: all of the episodes in full, you know, because when you're filming, I'm not watching everyone else's storyline and, you know, you're just day to day.
8:08
[SPEAKER_02]: But to see it, I felt myself chewing on questions that I hadn't even noticed were part of the piece, which is really nice because I feel like if you feed the audience too much,
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[SPEAKER_02]: You're not giving them any room to do, to do the work.
8:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what I love about cinema as being able to try and puzzle things out and go grab dinner with whoever you watched a movie with and chat it through and try and see the bigger picture.
8:37
[SPEAKER_02]: So I hope this show brings about that type of connection and conversation after it.
8:45
[SPEAKER_06]: And we'll be right back right after this.
8:48
[SPEAKER_06]: Welcome back, it's Kyle Meredith with the cast and crew of Alien Earth on FX.
8:54
[SPEAKER_06]: Tim, I'll just start with you.
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[SPEAKER_06]: Does this series like this?
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[SPEAKER_06]: Does it influence like how you feel about AI in the future?
9:02
[SPEAKER_06]: Do you go that deep on something like this?
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[SPEAKER_07]: In the future.
9:05
[SPEAKER_07]: I feel better now.
9:06
[SPEAKER_06]: Right now, sure.
9:08
[SPEAKER_06]: In the future.
9:09
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
9:10
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, yeah.
9:11
[SPEAKER_07]: I mean, I'm rooting for us.
9:14
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm on the side of the people so far.
9:19
[SPEAKER_07]: But yeah, I think I'm a little, I'm a little iffy on it all, as most people I imagine.
9:27
[SPEAKER_06]: Alex, for you, I mean, does doing a series, like, do you find it in influences how you start thinking about AI in the future, or maybe you're not?
9:37
[SPEAKER_10]: I just didn't.
9:37
[SPEAKER_10]: I feel like whenever whatever you're doing as an actor ends up becoming, you become
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[SPEAKER_10]: sort of any of this obsession or quality.
9:46
[SPEAKER_10]: So everything becomes sort of refracted in the prism of the thing that you're working on where they're like, it's alien or when the intelligence did a film about being a drag queen.
9:58
[SPEAKER_10]: And like, whatever you're doing, you sort of end up kind of like a magpie collecting stuff from you.
10:04
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
10:04
[SPEAKER_10]: We're quite similar in that way and we would share like podcasts about AI or all like songs that connected to the piece emotionally and
10:12
[SPEAKER_10]: That's one of my favorite things about being an actor actually, is that you become, for that moment, you become like an amateur expert on that thing.
10:19
[SPEAKER_10]: We don't ask me anything about AI.
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[SPEAKER_10]: I don't understand how it works.
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[SPEAKER_10]: Not sure where it's going in the future.
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[SPEAKER_10]: But you become, I don't know, sort of like, you know, I guess a collectionist for that particular slither of thing.
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[SPEAKER_10]: And that's quite enjoyable.
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[SPEAKER_10]: You're like a human sponge.
10:39
[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_06]: Babu, I'll actually throw this one at you too.
10:43
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, you're in Timothy both, you're dead eye acting is so good in this.
10:51
[SPEAKER_06]: I think it has the answer.
10:52
[SPEAKER_06]: Dead eye acting.
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[SPEAKER_07]: That was my sophomore year.
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[SPEAKER_07]: Dead eye acting, one, one, one.
10:58
[SPEAKER_07]: Indeed.
10:59
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I think I would ask the yourself and the character, the same thing.
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[SPEAKER_06]: Like, is it a case of shutting off your humanity?
11:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's just not difficult for you.
11:11
[SPEAKER_07]: No, I find it really easy to do that person.
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[SPEAKER_07]: I saw him do that in the street just the other day.
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[SPEAKER_01]: All this.
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[SPEAKER_07]: Shut up, you man today.
11:18
[SPEAKER_07]: And then I can do anything.
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[SPEAKER_07]: And it's back.
11:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I just, yeah, no, look, he's dealing with a lot of trauma moral.
11:30
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot that's happened.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And if he doesn't find some way to cope with that, it could potentially overwhelm him.
11:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And he has a task at hand, he has to do it.
11:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And he wants to do it, you know, six to five years in space, you owe yourself that as your life.
11:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So obsession.
11:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Indeed, completely obsessed.
11:51
[SPEAKER_01]: One track-minded, it's like this has to be done.
11:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And he will see it done.
11:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And he has a hundred but then faith in himself that he can do it.
11:58
[SPEAKER_01]: It's you.
11:59
[SPEAKER_07]: All I thought was every now and then I was like, be cool to do some dead.
12:05
[SPEAKER_06]: to the point though I mean there you all are like you're playing a synth like I don't know at some point you have to dance the robot just to get that out of your system because it's not robotic you know I did a scene where I danced yes you know that didn't make the cut oh yeah I did a whole day yeah you did it too yeah we shot and all some I did some dunk sent me did I did not we've got footage in the vault so that's no I get some point aliens earthen musical that's
12:35
[SPEAKER_06]: Sydney, it looked like there was so much running involved in what you were doing.
12:38
[SPEAKER_06]: And Alex, it looked like you were always walking through electrical problems.
12:42
[SPEAKER_10]: Yes, that's true.
12:43
[SPEAKER_10]: So it felt like you were in.
12:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I know.
12:46
[SPEAKER_10]: And you're so good at running.
12:49
[SPEAKER_02]: We learned.
12:50
[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, I see what a treadmill.
12:53
[SPEAKER_02]: It's it's by therapy.
12:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
12:55
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
12:56
[SPEAKER_06]: Samuel, um, there's a whole lot of Peter Panning going on here, but he could just as easily be Captain Hook.
13:01
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, does he think he's the good guy?
13:04
[SPEAKER_08]: I think he absolutely does think he's the good guy.
13:07
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
13:07
[SPEAKER_08]: And I think that that there's a deep, obviously, prescience with
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[SPEAKER_08]: what's happening right now.
13:13
[SPEAKER_08]: I love the fact that Peter Pan is a theme in the book obviously he's in our series as well.
13:18
[SPEAKER_08]: Obviously he's renamed the facility never land the lost boys and named out of it.
13:22
[SPEAKER_08]: Look at Peter Pan characters and I just love that he's completely misread the book Peter Pan.
13:28
[SPEAKER_08]: because if you actually read the book there's a dark story in there who's I think moral message is something to do with the fact that we have to grow up in order to be responsible human beings who are fully capable of love and empathy we have to grow up and be adults and he has read that book and gone ah if i'm a child i get to fly
13:47
[SPEAKER_08]: So if I stay as a child, I can just fly around and not have any responsibilities and be a rule but break us.
13:53
[SPEAKER_08]: So, you know, I think that there's maybe a presence there today with someone in that position seeing themselves as a superhero.
13:59
[SPEAKER_08]: I think he sees himself as a superhero.
14:02
[SPEAKER_06]: And we'll be right back right after this.
14:05
[SPEAKER_06]: Welcome back, it's Kyle Meredith with the cast and crew of Alien Earth on FX.
14:11
[SPEAKER_06]: I played part machine though, and this younger version, and I'm sure this is a usual thing, but what is the balance on that because you don't overact it?
14:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, great.
14:20
[SPEAKER_02]: That's great to hear.
14:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks.
14:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
14:25
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a strange dichotomy of having a weaponized, you know, a potentially weaponized body.
14:34
[SPEAKER_02]: This thing is very powerful.
14:36
[SPEAKER_02]: It says, you know, synthetic.
14:37
[SPEAKER_02]: It's immortal.
14:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And then having the mind of a twelve-year-old child as you know.
14:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I tried to answer that question.
14:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I tried to answer that for myself for many months before we started filming.
14:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And I couldn't find it.
14:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when I was able to get on set, I had done a bit of work and just some different ideas back and forth.
15:09
[SPEAKER_02]: But once I got on set with everybody and specifically working with Alex, the character kind of just fit into place for me.
15:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And she's brutally honest.
15:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Everything she says is her truth.
15:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And if people disagree with it, they're insane.
15:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Some things wrong.
15:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And if she's wrong, we really got a puzzle this through and figured out now.
15:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's an immediacy to the character.
15:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think there's also an immediacy to children.
15:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Anything that's in front of them is their whole world.
15:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And then something happens over here and that becomes their whole world.
15:50
[SPEAKER_02]: That's kind of where I jumped off with Wendy.
15:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, yeah, this whole cast is kind of everyone gave me something, gave me a part of the character really working with everybody.
16:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So.
16:03
[SPEAKER_10]: I love that moment.
16:04
[SPEAKER_10]: I just don't think, I just want to be sort of something happens, which means you effectively sort of power down.
16:10
[SPEAKER_10]: Can I say that?
16:12
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
16:12
[SPEAKER_10]: Right.
16:13
[SPEAKER_10]: In episode two or three, I think it's three.
16:16
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
16:16
[SPEAKER_10]: I mean, up on the floor.
16:18
[SPEAKER_09]: I like that.
16:19
[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, yeah.
16:21
[SPEAKER_10]: There's a choice that you made and which reveals the sort of mechanical aspect.
16:26
[SPEAKER_10]: Wendy, which I was like, oh yeah, but she's also a machine.
16:31
[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.
16:31
[SPEAKER_10]: It was just so beautiful because those things, those
16:37
[SPEAKER_10]: They're running at the same time, the humanness and the childness and the machine-like quality, and it depends sort of which layer of onion you're revealing at what time.
16:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was actually, that was so much fun because I loved, you know, we do lots of takes of every scene.
16:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I would, I would play with that of like, okay, focusing in on more of the Marci aspect, which kind of was the child aspect, focusing more on the Wendy aspect and then the machine.
17:04
[SPEAKER_09]: So taking different takes in different ways.
17:12
[SPEAKER_06]: It's really great how none of you all overplay it and I you know with the joke about dancing the robot like Sammy you could play a psychopath but it doesn't really seem like that you know Babu the fact that you have that obsession it just never overwhelming like it's it really incredible that I acting at all so all the props to you all thank you so much
17:32
[SPEAKER_06]: It's brilliant.
17:33
[SPEAKER_06]: It really is.
17:34
[SPEAKER_06]: And I'll only end on saying the soundtrack.
17:38
[SPEAKER_06]: Levels up.
17:39
[SPEAKER_06]: Tool, Metallica, James Addiction, Nina.
17:42
[SPEAKER_06]: At the delivery episode, it just made everything that I saw that much more better.
17:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, good.
17:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I love a classic movie classic rock.
17:50
[SPEAKER_03]: That's my motto.
17:51
[SPEAKER_03]: It's pleasure talking to you.
17:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Take care of yourself.
17:55
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you.
17:55
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you.
17:56
[SPEAKER_06]: Awesome.
17:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much.
17:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Have a good day.
17:59
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you.
18:01
[SPEAKER_06]: And my thanks to, well, let's, let's, let's go through the whole thing.
18:05
[SPEAKER_06]: No, Holly, Timothy, Oliver, Sydney, Chandler, Samuel Blinken, Babu, C. Say, Alex Lawther, and David W. Zucker, Alien Earth.
18:13
[SPEAKER_06]: You can watch on FX.
18:15
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18:23
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18:36
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[SPEAKER_06]: That does it for another edition.
19:34
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm Kyle Meredith.
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