Timothy Olyphant on
The actor of "Justified" and "Fargo" talks about keeping the audience and the characters of the show "off balance" with Kirsh role.
By
Nick Romano
August 20, 2025 5:16 p.m. ET
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Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh on 'Alien: Earth'.Credit:
Patrick Brown/FX
It was October 2020 when
Timothy Olyphant proved he's the ideal guest star for your late-night talk show.
The actor of this year's event series
Alien: Earth popped over to Late Night with Seth Meyers via Zoom at the time to promote
Fargo on FX. First, he walked off camera to make himself an adult beverage to calm the nerves. Later, he whipped out his entire packet of "talking points" to show the audience. Studios typically prep their talent for media interviews by giving them a list of pointers to keep in mind, like the pages Olyphant waved at the camera.
Not using "seasons" to describe "installments" of a limited drama series was one such talking point Olyphant audibly read off for all to hear. It was a rare celebrity moment of authenticity.
"I'm gonna be honest with you, that's the last time I ever looked at talking points," Olyphant tells
Entertainment Weekly, reflecting on that particular moment also over Zoom but during a new interview promoting
Alien: Earth. "It's really good. That's what I'm selling. I'm telling everyone who's listening."
Timothy Olyphant for EW's San Diego Comic-Con photo shoot.
Photograph by
Jonny Marlow/Illustration by
Rebecca Holopter
So what's his secret to the art of the late-night talk show guest? "'Art' is a pretty lofty term," the actor, 57, playfully acknowledges, "but I appreciate the compliment. I've always been a fan of a good talk show appearance. I just try my best to be part of the conversation."
Olyphant's whole journey into acting began with his love for this alternative entertainment medium. In college at the University of Southern California, he had this idea in his head of being a talk show host one day, like his longtime pal
Conan O'Brien. "Somehow it made its way to me memorizing lines," Olyphant comments. But whether he's on screen sipping a cocktail with
Seth Meyers while wearing a red sports jersey or on screen as a white-haired android for
Alien: Earth, the Hawaii-born star of
Justified and
Santa Clarita Diet is entertaining no matter the screen.
Even before any visuals or story details were released for
Alien: Earth, which is currently debuting new episodes on FX every Tuesday night, TV lovers were sold on the idea of Olyphant playing a synthetic in this universe spawned from
Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror-thriller. The actor just seems like the kind of guy who finds the fun in whatever he does, whether it's running around with Jawas on
The Mandalorian or slinging pistols on
Deadwood.
'Alien: Earth' creator on staging an insane 'eat the rich' scene with a xenomorph
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Fans were proven right when Olyphant debuted as Kirsh, a robot from the Prodigy corporation tasked with mentoring Wendy (Sydney Chandler) and the Lost Boys, a group of hybrids, a new technology that allowed for the consciousness of terminally ill children to be placed in adult android forms. Olyphant's look comes with bleached hair and eyebrows, the latter of which he blames on showrunner
Noah Hawley, with whom he also worked on
Fargo.
"That was Noah's idea and I f---ing hate him for it," Olyphant jests.
Olyphant isn't the kind of actor who likes to dig in too deeply to the process of acting. Hawley warned as much in advance of this interview. "You're not gonna get much out of him," he says. Olyphant tends to keep things light and playful, which perhaps is what makes him so good at talk-show guesting.
Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant) on 'Alien: Earth'.
Patrick Brown/FX
Still, given the history of synthetics in the
Alien movies — such as
Ian Holm's Ash from the first film,
Michael Fassbender's Walter in 2017's
Covenant entry, and David Jonsson's Andy in last year's
Romulus — Olyphant says, on a more serious note, "I knew that it probably called for making some strong choices that weren't comfortable. You're playing a synthetic, and to some degree, you feel like you gotta do a little something, something. It's not just memorize your lines and show up. It's superficial, but you wanna do a little something with the look, you wanna do a little something with the voice or the mannerisms. That process was fun trying on different things for size."
He quickly interjects with something less technical and more playful. "At one point, I was like, 'I think I'm just gonna do a Michael Barbaro impression,'" he says of the journalist and host of
The Daily, the podcast from
The New York Times. "Then I thought that might be
too Alien."
Adarsh Gourav as Slightly, Timothy Olyphant as Kirsh, Jonathan Ajayi as Smee on 'Alien: Earth'.
Patrick Brown/FX
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Even by episode 3, which aired this week, it's unclear if Kirsh is a good synth or a bad synth. Characters within the world of
Alien: Earth are wary of these beings, but so are viewers watching the show at home. These figures, with some exceptions, often turn on their human companions, typically by letting a face-hugger make contact.
"It felt like that was the game every day on set," Olyphant acknowledges. "I knew that part of the role was keeping both the people within the show off balance and also keeping the audience off balance. Every day, it felt like I was testing the boundaries of what I could get away with."
The hair, as much as Olyphant wants to laugh about it, was indeed part of that process of pushing boundaries and giving a little "something, something," as he put it. He points to Holm's Ash in
Alien. "They put a British guy in that role, right? Everybody else is American. This just separates him in some way," Olyphant says. "We're playing with the same rules, right? We knew we wanted to do something that separated him. The best idea I had was the hair. I was like, 'That's all I got. We could f--- with the hair.'"
Hawley was the one who said, "If you f--- with the hair, you gotta do the eyebrows."
It makes Olyphant recall something his late acting teacher, William Esper, told him: "You gotta commit." And, boy, does he ever.
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