How Chiwetel Ejiofor and Naomie Harris bring hope to humanity with The Man Who Fell to Earth

The 1976 movie The Man Who Fell to Earth is the story of a man falling — which is to say, succumbing — to Earth. Being defeated by Earth. It's the tragic tale of an extraterrestrial, known as Thomas Newton and played by David Bowie, whose mission to save his home planet is derailed by the temptations and trappings of humanity, namely alcohol and television.

On the other hand, the 2022 TV show The Man Who Fell to Earth — styled as a continuation of the film, which was based on a 1963 novel — is almost the story of Earth falling, succumbing, to man. But it also offers hope to humanity in the form of an alien called Faraday (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who arrives on Earth, like Bowie's Newton, on a mission to save his dying planet. In the process, he might offer humans the chance to rescue their own deteriorating world.

"Obviously, humanity is very challenged by this capacity to lean towards terrible things," Ejiofor tells EW. "But what Faraday recognizes, and I think what is true, is that humanity is a force of good that can do extraordinarily positive things. And he recognizes that humanity is worth investing in and worth saving."

Despite those cosmic stakes, The Man Who Fell to Earth (premiering Sunday on Showtime) also tells a very intimate story, about "the two loneliest people in the universe finding each other," as co-creator Alex Kurtzman puts it. The other side of the equation is Justin Falls, a human played by Naomie Harris who, at the start of the series, has left her past life as a scientist behind in the wake of a tragic event.

"She's in a state of self-imposed exile in a way," says Kurtzman. "The isolation that she feels is what it would be like if you had within you the potential to change not just your world, but another world, and you were so scared to access it that you locked yourself away in a box."

As such, Justin is just barely getting by, while caring for her young daughter and elderly father, when a man from outer space drops into her life. "She's just kind of on this hamster wheel of survival," Harris explains. "Faraday comes in, and he's yet another person that she feels that she has to be responsible for. And the wonderful thing about it is that Faraday teaches her so much, and reminds her about who she truly is and what she is truly capable of."

It's mutual, in a way: "Faraday has to learn what it feels like to be without," says co-creator Jenny Lumet, who serves as co-showrunner with Kurtzman and John Hlavin. "He has to learn what loss is, and then he learns what it is to connect. And the character of Justin, who has lost so much, including losing herself, gets to rejoice in finding herself again."

"Justin's lonely because she's cut herself off from the world, and she feels like she's not deserving of any love," Harris adds. "And Faraday's lonely because he's cut off from himself. He is totally disconnected from his feelings, from his heart. He leaves his home, his wife, his children, and has seemingly no sense of remorse or sense of missing them. So both of them have to learn to how to reconnect."

As the two embark on a quest to bring Earth-shattering (not literally) technology to the world, a major arc of the first season involves Faraday's shift from otherworldly outsider to the Steve Jobs-esque figure glimpsed in the opening moments of the pilot. "As the series goes on, you see him in more and more of a psychologically human space," Ejiofor explains.

Adds Kurtzman, "There is a wonderful question at the heart of the film, which is, what happens to a being that has no real innate understanding of humanity, when humanness begins to infect them like a virus? And that actually can be a real positive [thing]. What happens when a creature who doesn't understand concepts like emotion or empathy begins to feel those things? That was a really exciting dramatic idea to us."

Depicting that transition required Ejiofor to deploy both his psychological and physical prowess as an actor. "What's great about playing an alien is that you can only ever play your alien," the Oscar nominee muses. "The alien that you come up with is so intrinsic to who you are, and the moments in your life when you've felt isolated or when you felt like an outsider. For an actor, it's very rich, because you get to mine a lot of your own thoughts, your own feelings, your own neurosis."

Not that it's all so weighty: Faraday's arrival on Earth comes with plenty of fish-out-of-water comedy, including misapplications of four-letter words and, at one point, sticking a considerable length of garden hose down his throat in pursuit of drinking water.

"This project is a bit of a big swing in a way, and that's attractive to me, because it makes me a little nervous, frankly," Ejiofor admits. "Like, these parts need to land, and their energy is comedic, but you have to believe the character as well. If there's not a grounded reality, you're not necessarily going to follow through the rest of the story."

Echoes Kurtzman, who directed the show's first four episodes, "It has to be grounded in actual behavior, in his lack of understanding of things. It's such a tricky balance, because the line you're always walking is: Are you laughing with or are you laughing at? Navigating that was really the daily work that Chiwetel and I did together."

A balance also had to be struck during production between Ejiofor's and Harris' vastly different performing styles. "Chiwetel is incredibly cerebral and methodical about everything that he does, so he likes a lot of rehearsals, a lot of talking about the script," explains Harris. "Whereas I don't like any of that. I don't really want to dissect stuff, because I want to be surprised and I want to be in the moment."

"I tend to be in my head more and she's very instinctive," Ejiofor acknowledges. "And that's really great. It definitely teaches me things as I as I go along, and I try to keep up."

And while Kurtzman "much more leans towards Chiwetel's style of working," Harris says, "he's so generous and so trusting of his actors, that he was like, 'If that's not how you work, then you do your style of working and that's fine.' And so we never rehearsed until we actually got on set."

"The thing that's really beautiful is watching the different techniques and methods by which actors give you their gifts," says Kurtzman. "Between the two of them, every day, half of my job was just to step back and let them work."

And ultimately, their contrasting approaches "worked really well, because [Ejiofor's character] is from a completely different world," Harris says. "He's supposed to operate under completely different terms, and she is supposed to be constantly surprised and on the back foot."

If that dynamic, as Kurtzman acknowledges, is a well-worn one, The Man Who Fell to Earth is distinguished by being "grounded in an emotional reality that's very specific to our time right now." The nearly 50 years since Bowie's man fell to Earth have seen the concept of a dying planet grow much less far-fetched, and the new series meets those concerns head-on — with a healthy, or at least hearty, dose of hope.

"We are bombarded all day long with the reasons why you should despair horribly about the state of human beings, but no one's really telling us all the reasons why human beings are also extraordinary," Kurtzman says. "And that's why we wrote this story: to look for an affirmation about what's great and what's beautiful about human beings. We just didn't want to present a one-sided argument."

Case in point: "I'm a little bit more pessimistic," Harris admits, "but I think this show offers many examples of how it is possible that we can crawl our way out of the hole that we've created for ourselves. I think it's hopeful about humanity, and I think a big part of that hope is exemplified in Justin, and her selflessness and willingness to put others before you and to be sacrificial.

"I wonder how many people are willing to do that," she adds. "I feel like this show lays down a gauntlet and says, 'Here is an opportunity, if you'll only listen.'" Thomas Newton didn't. Maybe we can.

The Man Who Fell to Earth premieres Sunday at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Showtime.

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