“I Can’t Play a Motorola Razr Phone” – David Jonsson Talks Portraying Alien: Romulus Synthetic Andy

Talking to Rolling Stone about his experience working on Alien: Romulus and his role of Andy, Cailee Spaeny’s synthetic brother in the new film, the outlet noted how his character’s name broke the naming convention we’ve seen in the series (Alien: Covenant did the same with Walter). Acknowledging the point, Jonsson went on to talk about the difficulties portraying “technology” and his approach.

That’s right. Well, you say that, but listen, everything’s been thought about. You have to remember that David was years in the future. I think that’s a wonderful reflection of the world that we live in now. Ridley Scott makes a movie and then James Cameron takes over. They leave a 45-year gap. Think about us: Nokia 3310 was what… 10, 15 years ago? And now we’ve got iPhones and things that we can talk into. It’s crazy. So, Andy comes before a lot of that technology [in Aliens], and there’s a wonderful thing with Andy that when you first meet him, there’s not a lot of things that are working with him. And again, I don’t know technology — I can’t play a Motorola Razr phone. But I can play someone who has a disability or isn’t fully functioning but knows what they want to say and the person that is underneath them.

There was a lot of inspiration from understanding people with ailments and finding people who know what they want to say but maybe don’t have the full capacity to say it. That was a big inspiration to me — in real life, humans that could be mistaken for being emotionally disconnected. You can’t play an android — I found that out quite quickly. You can only play someone, otherwise Rain wouldn’t tell him all her secrets and all the things that she would; you’re just talking to your phone. You need to be able to talk to someone that you identify as human. I’m quite an emotional being myself and I can’t cry in those scenes, you know what I mean? You have to pare it back whilst also giving everything. That was the trickiest.

You play an android, which have held pivotal roles in all of the various Alien films. They start off in the first film as a villainous character that is actually a traitor to the humans. Then, in the second film, Bishop acts as a kind of saviour to Ripley, through to Michael Fassbender’s more complex character of David in Prometheus and Covenant. How does Andy relate to these previous androids?

Well, first of all, it’s an honour. I can’t believe my name’s next to those people — that’s crazy. Michael Fassbender is awesome. Ian Holm, awesome. It’s the actors and their interpretation that allows you to say everything you just said about the characters. And that’s what I hope I’ve done with Andy. There’s more to them than just the script and the lines. I think the wonderful thing about synthetic androids is that they are kind of what you make ’em, you know what I mean? And they turn on a sixpence. You never know quite what to make [of] technology, whether they’re helping us or they’re pulling away from us. And that was the complexity that I loved in Andy, but I didn’t want to give it to you on a plate. I’m not one of those actors. I’m going to let you decide where you sit with him.

Rolling Stone also asked Jonsson about any advice that he received from producer Sir Ridley Scott about how to play the character, Jonsson received some succinct advice.

Yeah, he was just like, “Don’t be shit.” Something along the lines of that! I’m not just saying this, but the studio and Fede and all the team had supreme trust in me, and I kind of needed that. I think I’m one of those actors: you need to let me off the lead to bring me back on again, otherwise I just don’t function. So, they let me off the lead, which was fun.

You can head on over to Rolling Stone to check out the interview in its entirety, in which David Jonsson talks about his history, his other roles and a little more about Alien: Romulus. Thanks to Ingwar for the news.

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