I expect there are a lot of furious phone calls going back and forth between FX’s PR department and Sydney Chandler’s management today after Variety’s big cover story about Alien: Earth dropped. The series just may be FX’s splashiest gamble yet; the show aims to bring one of sci-fi’s biggest properties to television for the first time, and comes with a hefty price tag attached (Variety hints that the undisclosed budget exceeds Shōgun’s $250 million cost).
With so much riding on it, a good cover story in one of the biggest trade publications is a key step in any press strategy, and Variety’s story is just what they were looking for in a lot of ways. Writer Daniel D’Addario delves into the long development process, the passion showrunner Noah Hawley has for the franchise, and the business changes that made bringing Alien to television possible. Internet boyfriend and series star Timothy Olyphant even managed to deliver the perfect pitch for the show: “If you take the monster away, you still feel like you got a good story.”
Before you get to all of that, though, there’s a six-paragraph lead in about how Sydney Chandler, the lead actress of the series, didn’t turn up for the cover shoot. And yeah, it doesn’t look good. She waffled about whether she’d show up, keeping everyone guessing. She also argued about doing their viral video segment, a game called “How Well Do They Know Each Other?,” before eventually declining. It is absolutely unprofessional behavior, but you know what’s also pretty unprofessional? Turning a story about Alien: Earth into a story about the unreliable, nervous actress fronting it, and not because she’s a bad actress. D’Addario makes sure to mention how good Chandler is in the role! It’s because she had the gall to, in her words, draw a boundary:
“I’m just a private person,” she says in a subsequent phone interview. She says her opting out was simply drawing a firm boundary, not a response to any problem. “I’m new to press — it’s a bit out of my comfort zone. I was more than happy to talk about anything and everything about the show; that’s what I’m here to promote.”
There is a delicious amount of inside baseball to the cover story opening with the frustrations of wrangling talent for press, and I’m sure being able to put it all out there honestly was immensely satisfying. There’s also a degree of pettiness to it, from highlighting all the big-name actors who have done the same fun little interview game without issue to bringing up the fact that Sydney is the nepo-baby daughter of actor Kyle Chandler (D’Addario doesn’t explain how un-Hollywood Sydney’s career path was until much later in the article). My most charitable read is that Variety may have wanted to head off any criticism of why their cover shoot includes two men and not the lead actress by pointing the finger squarely at said actress. Still, it feels more like an unnecessary hit job against an actress in her first leading role, with only a handful of previous credits to her name. If Brad Pitt did this, it’d be an interesting story of hubris and star power; of course, if Brad Pitt did this, his team would make sure nary a mention of it ever came to light. Was Sydney Chandler’s crime really worthy of this much reputational damage?
We’re used to viewing journalists as the underdogs speaking truth to power, but opening the cover story in this manner felt very much like a power play itself, almost like a retaliation. Yes, Sydney Chandler didn’t do everything she was expected to as part of this interview. She didn’t do her job, and that’s the truth. It’s also true that promotional responsibilities are important, taxing, and in addition to what her job really is, which is acting. Maybe it’s the truth that FX didn’t do a good job media training her, or that outlets demand a lot of access — too much? — in exchange for promoting a television show.
Leading the cover story by talking about her unreliability was a choice, and maybe someday we’ll find out it was a precursor to other unprofessional behavior from her. Variety could already be cooking up an exposé about tensions on the Alien: Earth set for all I know. But to me, that choice shines a spotlight not on a difficult actor but on the demands we place on actors to promote in addition to performing. Coincidentally, The Hollywood Reporter’s big cover story today was an interview with Tim Burton and Jenna Ortega about the return of Netflix’s Wednesday. In it, Ortega talks about facing backlash for the first time (after quotes about her “changing lines” on set went viral) and how challenging it is to feel misunderstood. Then the pair share this exchange:
BURTON: You know what I miss? I miss the days of mystery. I miss when you didn’t know how much a movie cost and when you didn’t know everything about actors. So when people have a misunderstanding, it’s like, why is it their business?
ORTEGA: That’s the discussion on “the death of the movie star,” and that’s exactly it. We know too much. And the people feel entitled to those bits and pieces of your life where if they were put under the same microscope, they wouldn’t feel nearly as comfortable. But there’s an expectation on creative people, who half the time should not be speaking publicly. They’re supposed to become salesmen for their brand. But they should just lock them in a room and let them create their art.
I don’t think we’re ever going to get away from the PR responsibilities that go hand-in-hand with acting in Hollywood, and there is no doubt that Chandler mishandled the photo shoot at the very least. But I can’t help but admire someone at the start of their career already knowing how tricky the promotional game can be and being wary of it. I hope she gets a chance to grow confident in her role as the public face of a show and the demands that go along with it, but I also think maybe it’s not the worst thing for any actor to say “no” to silly little viral video bits. Variety may have titled the piece “‘Alien: Earth’ Is Wildly Ambitious, Expensive and Stars a Talented Actor Who Refuses to Play by Hollywood’s Rules” but it kinda seems like the only rules that she didn’t play by were Variety’s own.
