Alien: Earth prosthetics artist says he was most nervous to take on the chestbursters after being asked to take inspiration from the John Hurt scene in the original movie: "It's quite pressurizing to come up with something as good as that"

News
By published

Alien: Earth's lead prosthetics artist felt the pressure when it came to recreating the iconic chestburster

Sydney Chandler as Wendy and Alex Lawther as Joe Hermit in Alien: Earth.
(Image credit: FX/Hulu)

As the latest (and first small-screen) installment of the beloved Alien franchise, Alien: Earth has a lot to live up to – and lead prosthetics artist Steven Painter says he felt that the most strongly when taking on the show's version of the chestburster.

Warning: there are Alien: Earth spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution if you're not up to date!

"As far as the effect that took the longest in my head – which was about a year to work it out – was the chestburster sequence," Painter told Bloody Disgusting. "When Noah [Hawley, showrunner] approached me to do it, he mentioned the John Hurt chestburster moment. It’s an iconic scene. From my point of view, it’s quite pressurizing to come up with something as good as that in a show like this."

"So I approached it very carefully and I watched the original sequence over and over," Painter continued. "I broke it down and took elements from it, but then updated it for modern times. What I really wanted to do was expand on it. So we see the whole body of the creature now, and it’s in daylight. We gave ourselves a lot of work to do, but hopefully we’ve given the fans what they wanted to see."

Emily Garbutt
Entertainment Writer

I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections. I help bring you all the latest news and also the occasional feature too. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism. 

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.