Trevor Newlin Interview

Trevor Newlin is a creature performer and previously worked with special effects studio Legacy Effects as a Wookie on Mandalorian and then as a Yeti for a commercial. Legacy Effects was one of the special effects studios for 2024’s Alien: Romulus and Trevor ultimately got the role to portray the Xenomorph in 2024’s Alien: Romulus. We interviewed Trevor for episode #191 of the AvPGalaxy Podcast.

We talked about falling into a career doing monster and suit work and what it was like on the set of Alien: Romulus. You can watch the interview below or read on for a transcription.

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Aaron: Could you tell our audience a little bit about yourself? When did you decide you wanted to be an actor and how did you end up in creature performance specifically?

Trevor: Yeah, so, I’ll give you the quick rundown. I started in theater. Came from Texas originally. Moved from Texas to Los Angeles to pursue film and voiceover. Then I got to do background on the Mandalorian season 2 of Star Wars in a Wookie suit. That’s where I met Legacy Effects and they got my information.

Three years later, I get a phone call basically that says “Hey, we have this commercial shooting tomorrow.” Ended up being a national commercial for Amazon. It was a Yeti, and that was my first suit performance besides the Wookie but like with animatronics and all the servos and everything. All that fun stuff and then from there that led to Alien.

So went from theater to wanting to do voiceover to getting into the prosthetic world with little commercials here and there to meeting Legacy Effects to suit performance now. That’s what I mainly do mostly is suit performance. When I was younger, I wanted to be a paleontologist because I love dinosaurs growing up. So, it is a very different path but I’m really happy and excited with where it’s gone.

Aaron: Yeah, I bet. Especially with the scope and success that Romulus has had recently. Definitely an interesting career so far in that regard.

Trevor: Yeah, I mean it’s so cool to see how well the film is doing and the audience’s reactions to it and how people are just so excited about a new Alien film. I think that’s just such a cool thing for the franchise as well. It’s bringing up conversation, though.

I think that’s like Fede said you either you either love it or you really hate it but either way it’s going to bring that conversation because I know with Prometheus and Covenant, like there are the certain things that people are not too fond of and either people love Prometheus or they love or they hate it or they love Covenant or hate it.

Right, so I think you’re kind of getting a similar thing here but it’s awesome because it’s still bringing conversation about the film which altogether helps the film in general. It’s cool to have people that are so passionate about something. That means it’s something that was made that is that is really well done, I think.

Aaron: With you sort of… I don’t want to say you fell into the creature performance but with it not being perhaps not the route you went down directly, have you found yourself really taken to it then? From that initial Wookie in the background?

Trevor: Yeah, so it’s interesting because I had a teacher in the film school I went to out here. His name was Phil Kaufman and he was like “Hey you have a really similar build to Doug Jones” and I didn’t know who Doug was at the time but I had seen him in all the films that he’s done. Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy. Shape of Water was at that point, I believe going up for an Oscar and won best picture that year. So, I met with Doug. I reached out to him on Instagram. Met with him and I was super nervous because like, here’s a guy that’s at the top.

He’s at his career and he was just the sweetest like kindest individual, gave me advice. Basically, wanted to know about me and my story and how I got to where I was at and stayed close with Doug throughout my career now and he’s a really good friend of mine and he’s been so influential in my career but yeah, I would say now I mean I love what I do.

I always said that when I wanted to get into voiceover, I would be more satisfied if I never saw my face on screen and people just heard my voice. So, it’s a little bit different in the world we’re at now. I mean you’re hearing my screeches and things like that but it’s such a rewarding thing to be able to portray these characters that are so iconic and also other characters as well that are new because also as an actor, it’s such a fun exploration for… most of the time actors are telling a story with our body language and so with creatures and stuff, you truly are.

That is how you tell your story. Like I mean, the xenomorph is a xenomorph but the xenomorph also has wants and needs and things that it wants to accomplish, just like any person does in a scene. It’s really cool and also a challenge to create these characters when they are so well established in film history with all the performances done by all the other people that have been in the suit.

Legendary performances and to just grab some of those things and bring them into my performance and allow that to help influence what I’ve done with this film and other films in the future. So, I would say I’m really grateful and excited that I fell into this world because I’ve always been the tall, lanky guy. I always kind of stood out and I didn’t really realize…

I thought for me that you needed to be bigger to do suit performance because the suits are so… a lot of them are massive and then when I did the yeti, I found out oh no they’ll just put you in a muscle suit and then put the suit over the top of you and voila, you’re a big old muscular monster yeti and I was like oh okay.

So, it is good to be like thin and lanky to do this type of work. So, I over the past couple years I’ve really started to explore the work and appreciate just how much goes into performances that a lot of people don’t realize go into those performances.

Aaron: You were talking about the yeti and you’ve got all that animatronic going off in your head. It’s got to be distracting at that moment as well. It’s not so simple as just wearing a suit, is it?

Trevor: No, I mean also with the xenomorph like inside of that head, that’s sitting on top of me, are all these servos and when they call action, I’m just hearing [robotic noises] and then Fede is like “Do this” and I’m like “Huh. What?” And they couldn’t really like mic me up in my ear because of the way the head sits and everything.

So, they just had a big mic off stage with a speaker to like tell me what I needed to do or like Christopher Swift from Legacy Effects would come up to me and kind of like give me notes in between each take as to what they wanted to change or do. So yeah, I mean it was also just an experience of learning how to adapt and do things a little bit differently than your normal role in a film or television show or whatever it may be.

Adam: So, you can’t take part in any Alien podcast without being asked about the first time you came across H.R. Giger’s iconic beautiful beast. For many Alien fans out there, their first encounter left an indelible mark on their memory. What was it like for you?

Trevor: So interesting thing about me is I didn’t grow up in a horror household at all. Like my mom and dad never watched horror films but I do remember seeing the Alien, the xenomorph and I always was so fascinated by its design and it always struck me and kind of like was like “Whoa, that’s super interesting.”

I didn’t see the film till I was much older but I do remember seeing scenes. Of course the iconic scene where the Alien is first revealed hanging from the chains and lifting its head there which was so cool. We got to do like a homage to that with Romulus where I got to lift my head coming out of the cocoon and that first shot of the xenomorph with the dripping.

I was like “Oh that’s so cool.” Like Badejo did that scene and now I get to. Like that’s so cool to me but for me like I said. I didn’t come from a household that watched scary films but I do remember very early on seeing the Alien and being like that’s a really cool creature. Like that’s super fun and unique and so different from everything that I’ve seen in like the world of horror because like for me, what I knew of horror was like Freddy and Jason and Michael Myers and I was like “Well, this is very different.”

Aaron: What is your favorite of the films and why?

Trevor: I think I have to go with Alien. Like, I’ll give my top three. I think are Alien, Aliens and then I would say Romulus. No bias there. No bias, none at all, but I mean like with Alien is truly the perfect sci-fi horror film, like I mean Badejo’s movements first off. Like just watching some of his screen tests and how he moved around the world and how he brought such a unique life to this creature that nobody else knew about before then and just the atmosphere.

Like I think Fede did a really good job of recapturing that atmosphere with Romulus, but some of those long shots in the hallways in the first Alien and the set design and the fact that all the characters, you care about all these characters. They’re a likeable group of people because I feel like in a lot of horror films and films like that, you have your main character and then you have everybody else that’s gonna die.

So, you truly feel like “Hey this is a group of people that are surviving together. They’re living together. I’m rooting for all these people. I don’t want them to die. This is horrible. What’s going on?” and also the first Chestburster scene. Like that’s iconic. That’s absolutely iconic. I mean, I can’t imagine when that came out in theaters and people saw that scene for the first time. Like, I would love to see videos of how, like these days they do videos of live audiences seeing scenes in films and they like record it.

I would love to see what those first reactions were, but I think just all those elements combined. Like, I don’t think you can beat the original Alien. I love Aliens because the queen is super freaking cool and I mean it’s an action film. James Cameron, but I mean I can’t go against Alien. I can’t do it.

Aaron: So, coming from a non-horror family, have you gravitated towards horror as you’ve grown up?

Trevor: Well, now I kind of have because that’s what I work in. Most of the suit performance and prosthetics and things like that that I do is in the horror genre.  My dad had seen a lot of horror films. My mom… Romulus for her… she did really well. She watched the whole film but like that is something that she’s never experienced.

She had never seen an Alien film. So, like her going into this was a very interesting experience, sitting next to her and her watching it. But I would say now I’ve definitely watched more horror than I used to just because I’m kind of living in that world more so now which is cool because there’s a lot of really fun films that I didn’t see when I was younger that I see how they influenced things that are coming out today and horror now is insanely… like it’s popping off. It’s such a good year for horror films this year. Both massive budgets and smaller budgets, as well which is cool to see.

Aaron: Every actor and performer who works on Alien films has their own unique story about how they became attached to the project. You’ve talked about Legacy reaching out to you following Mandalorian but how did the rest of that sort of conversation go? Was there a screen test? Was there an audition, so to speak? What was that casting experience like for you?

Trevor: So basically, what happened is after I’d done the yeti, they brought me in for some pictures and I took some action shots of doing classic creature movements. Things like that and they basically told me like “Hey, we’re trying to put you up for something.

We can’t tell you anything more than that. We’ll see what we can do” and then I get a call a couple weeks later from everybody. All the bosses at Legacy basically saying like “Hey, this is one of those phone calls that might change things for you” and that’s kind of when I found out that I was going to be attached to the new Alien film.

Then I went in and started doing fittings and tests and the whole process and Fede came by a couple times and saw some stuff. So yeah, it was a whirlwind but it was so much fun just being a part of the whole process from like the very beginning of building all the Xeno stuff and seeing it all being built in the shop and then seeing it out on set and then wearing the suit out there was a just an insane journey. It’s so cool. Like it’s still surreal to me.

Like it really is. It’s like I said, I’ve seen the film eight times. I’ve seen my name and the credits and it’s still just like “Oh yeah, that’s my name attached to the Alien franchise and the Xenomorph” which is you know… I don’t have to say anything more about the Xenomorph. It’s really cool to me. Like, I’m still nerding out about that.

Adam: Just how involved were you during the suit-making process? Like did you do a lot of work with Legacy Effects to make sure you were able to perform in it initially?

Trevor: Yeah, so I went to Legacy Effects a good amount of times just for fittings and things like that. Changing things. Trying on the hands, the feet that I call the Xeno ones, because they were basically like sock shoes and then they built the foot over the top of it. So, I could do running and jumping and things like that.

They did a couple of cocoon tests at Legacy Effects with just like a stunt head and like the very bare bones of the cocoon. So, we tested me going through it different times and things like that. Then tested a good amount of different xenomorph heads just for movement and things like that and you took photos, references and things. That was kind of the whole process and then went out there and shot everything that we worked on.