Q: Guy, obviously there was a lot of secrecy around your role. How did you find it in the build-up, the fact you had to almost detach yourself from the promotional bit, that [TED talk] viral that was out. How did you find that all, the process, rather than a normal film?

Guy: Well, it wasn't difficult: I don't have any problems not talking about a film. Y'know, "we need you to not say this" – great! They did throw a hood over me every time I walked from one stage to another.

Noomi: You looked like something weird from Star Wars!

Guy: In case any of you guys were hanging off a fence trying to take photos or something. So I kept getting lost or going to the wrong place. But no, it was fine, really it was a quick process for me, because these guys shot for about three or four months or something altogether, and I really just came in for a couple of weeks in the middle and went "wow, what a fun ride this feels like" and then I left. And then, y'know, there were some questions back and forth between myself and the Fox marketing team going, well, what exactly are we saying, what do you not want to say? So it was just about clarifying that, I suppose. But no, no real difficulty in keeping secrets.

Michael: I love the fact that [Guy's character] Weyland's wandering aimlessly around Pinewood lot, appearing in various films. Various films with Weyland in the back!

Guy: Exactly, I'm in Snow White, I'm in the Johnny Depp movie.

Noomi: Dark Shadows, yeah, I actually saw you in that!

Guy: I am the dark shadow!

Q: Michael, the whole lead-up where they're showing David whiling away his time: how much of that was written into it, how much did you add to it – the bicycle, shooting baskets, certain movies...?

Michael: Yeah, that was a lot of fun. The basketball stuff was all in there, and I think that's a nice little recognition of Alien. And the hair-dying was my idea, so that was pretty cool, I was happy to see that that got stuck in, working on my highlights and watching Lawrence of Arabia.

Guy: Lawrence of Arabia was always in, wasn't it.

Michael: Yeah, that was always in, that was in the script, he had this thing about Lawrence. So that was it, most of it was there: the idea of him wandering around the ship, and then of course we got to see him learning the language because that's gonna be revealed later. So pretty much all of what was there, and then it was just a matter of just fleshing out bits and pieces.

Guy: What about picking up the little speck of something?

Michael: Well that was actually... Ridley said, "I thought, y'know, it would be like a button or something, like he checks the surface of the ship for dust." I was like, that's interesting... of course I didn't want to do exactly what he said, so I picked up something from the floor. [laughs] So those little things, it's great like that. Because y'know, Ridley's really good at just giving you a flavor of something, rather than a direction. It's like, "I thought your character might possess this object" and you're, like, oh wow, okay, cool, that's interesting.

Guy: How do I incorporate that in?

Michael: Yeah, totally.

Noomi: How do I do a version of what Ridley said, not what he said...

Michael: Exactly.

Q: Noomi, you're playing a female role in a series that has had some really memorable female roles. How do you feel about playing that kind of role?

Noomi: When they told me that he wanted to work with me, just that, it took a while for me to really believe it and to realize that it's happening. And then, when I got to read the script, and when he told me about this character, it felt like a great honor and I was terrified at the same time. But I think, as soon as you start to work, get into it, you have to kind of push away everything around you and not think about people's expectations and what's gone before, and that it's Ridley Scott.

I think you just have to find your focus and find your own way of doing it, because if you're trying to satisfy people and trying to do something that will fit in in the line of his fantastic heroines, it's gonna be impossible to work. So I kinda had to ignore all that, and force myself into some kind of protecting bubble of work. [To Michael] And you helped me! You took care of me in the bubble!

Michael: I was the bubble!

Q: You all have some great scenes with David in there, and I'm curious in the acting side, how do you approach this character as a robot – not as Michael, fellow-actor.

Noomi: He is a robot!

Q: The scene with Logan was really great...

Michael: That was fun, we filmed that pretty early, that was like the first week or so.

Logan: Yeah.

Guy: The drinking speech?

Michael: Yeah.


Original Source is here