Alex Barima Talks ‘Resident Alien’ Season 1 [Interview]

Syfy’s latest scripted dramedy, Resident Alien, premiered in January, after two years of production.

The series stars Alan Tudyk as an alien who has crash-landed on earth and must blend in with the townsfolk of Patience, Colorado as he attempts to find his device and complete his mission. 

Recent episodes have introduced a new thread to the plot in the form of General McCallister and her two henchmen who are hunting an alien. 

Recently, I had the chance to speak to Alex Barima, who plays David Logan, about his character, the show, and who might be the biggest alien conspiracy theorist on set. 

The audience first met David Logan and his partner Lisa Casper (Mandell Maughan) when they were talking to someone who reportedly saw an alien. Little was revealed about the characters at the time, but Barima did let us in on some of his observations of David. 

“He is definitely a very smart man, which I love about him. He’s very observant, and he’s very dedicated to his mission. He has a lot of personality traits that I really respect. He is a little bit of a passive-aggressive coward, which I guess is where the humor comes in. He’s very much bitten off more than he can chew,” Barima said. 

David and Lisa have two very different ways of doing things. Lisa is trigger happy and ready to kill anyone who stands in the way of their mission. David, on the other hand, favors books over the internet and gives off a vibe that feels more like Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

Viewers can’t deny that David and Lisa have great chemistry that comes out more with each interaction we see.  Barima and Maughan met on set for the first time the day they filmed the audience’s introduction to the characters. 

According to Barima, the dynamic extends into their real-life as well. 

“Mandell is very much a tough woman in real life and she’s not shy at all. Our dynamic in the show very much resembles our dynamic in real life. She is by far the person in the cast that I am closest to, and we just love making fun of each other. She definitely makes more fun of me but I know it’s coming from the best place so I love it,” Barima said.

Barima also talked a bit about the process of filming the series, and how much he knew going in. 

“I knew that I was an undercover operative. I knew that I was a human being searching for the alien and that he was being very elusive and all that, and I knew that I did not like Lisa at all,” he explained.

The rest was a mystery that Barima was happy to go on, and he credits the show’s creator and showrunner Chris Sheridan for keeping the secrets.

“Chris was very good at feeding us only as much as what we needed to know but also keeping us interesting in where we were going.”

Barima’s road to Resident Alien started like most other television roles, but when Barima got the callback, he was actually filming Riverdale. The set’s location presented some unique challenges for the callback. 

“Where Riverdale is filmed there’s very poor reception and very little wifi available, so they wanted me to do it remotely, and it was very much a challenge. Luckily for me, I ended up befriending one of the producers on the show and he actually personally helped me set up the callback in one of the production offices and he actually read [opposite] me,” Barima remembered.

In his time filming Resident Alien, Barima has been impressed with some of the sets that have been built for the production, including the hangar that was introduced on Resident Alien Season 1 Episode 6, “Sexy Beast.” 

This set houses the alien ship after David and Lisa find it. Barima remembers how cold the set was due to the pure concrete floors, but also how amazing it felt to be on that set. 

“There are so many cool set pieces that went into that set. That was probably the most impressive sci-fi set that I’ve worked on in past years. It actually feels like we’re making a Men in Black movie.”

Resident Alien‘s pilot was filmed in 2019 with filming set to begin that fall. As a result, it was one of many shows in production and impacted by the shutdown. Barima wasn’t on set that day but recalled hearing how emotional that moment was.

“People were very emotional because we cared about this show so much, and we just wanted to make it to the finish line to get it out there.”

“I don’t think any of us thought that we were down and out for good. I think we all knew that whenever productions would start coming back we would definitely be right there ready to go,” Barima said.

“Knowing that the show wasn’t finished and that we had to come back and we had a job to do once things got rolling, I think that really helped me personally, just kind of get through those first few months and say, ‘We’re going to buckle down for now, but I know for a fact we’re going to come back, it’s just a matter of when.'” 

The show was able to return to production six months later. 

Barima said that he always wanted to become an actor. He first met a talent manager when he was 16 and that laid the groundwork for him to come out to Vancouver.

He finished school, saved up some money, and moved when he was twenty. It was the first time he’d live outside of Montreal. He finished the full-time program at Vancouver Academy of Arts and started auditioning soon after. 

That eventually led to roles in shows like The 100, Riverdale, and The Exorcist. 

“It’s been a slow and steady grind, but I wouldn’t change a thing, it’s been the best decision I have ever made,” he said. 

For his future plans, Barima said he would like to do more of Resident Alien, but he’s also thinking about more creative ventures in the industry as he approaches ten years in the business. 

“I do want to branch out into more creative journeys like writing and directing my own projects, things like that. That is where I want to eventually take my career, but I’m not in a hurry. I just want to enjoy every step of the way as much as I can.”

He also had an improv project running in Canada in 2019 that was put on hiatus indefinitely, but he wants to bring that back once people can gather again. Other performance passions include voice acting.

“It’s very easy to coordinate because the time requirements are much lower than they are for on-camera stuff, so it’s easy to get a lot of stuff done in a short amount of time,” Barima explained. 

Barima enjoyed filming the first season of Resident Alien, so to close out the interview I asked him a few fun questions about the existence of aliens, including who the biggest alien conspiracy theorist was on set.

“I just assume everyone kind of believes in aliens, but I didn’t hear anything too crazy, to be honest,” he said. “On my side of the cast, we didn’t go too crazy with it, but I would say Mandell, just based on conversations we had without diving in too deeply, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a bunch of crazy theories that I never even heard of before.”

Barima also talked a little bit about his own belief in extraterrestrials.

“Absolutely, I don’t see why I would question it. I don’t know if they’ve been here or not. That’s a whole other conversation, but do I believe they exist,” he said.

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Resident Alien airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on Syfy.

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