‘Alien: Earth’ Star Lily Newmark Thinks Girls Will Relate To Nibs’s Growl: “There Something Feral About Young Girls”

Alien: Earth Episode 7 “Emergence” on FX features a Xenomorph bursting out of a character’s chest, another alien executing an entire unit of soldiers on Wendy’s (Sydney Chandler) command, and the reveal that, yes, one of the aliens brought to Earth does prefer synthetic flesh to organic. However, the most gruesome moment of the episode might be when Nibs (Lily Newmark) decides to finally fight back.

**Spoilers for Alien: Earth Episode 7 “Emergence,” now streaming on Hulu**

Alien: Earth Episode 7 “Emergence” ends with Wendy, Hermit (Alex Lawther), and Nibs discovering that Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) is already hip to their plan to escape Neverland. When the trio arrives at the boat meant to take them to freedom, a whole unit of Prodigy forces swoops in. The tense showdown erupts when one of the soldiers rips Nibs’s beloved Mr. Strawberry out of her hands and throws him in the water. Nibs responds by tearing the guy’s windpipe out of his throat.

Indeed, Alien: Earth Episode 7 was a big one for little Nibs. We’ve known for a few weeks now that she is the most fragile of the hybrids. Not only was she the youngest to transition from a dying child’s body to a superstrong synthetic form, but she also experienced some unspoken trauma. After encountering the Eye Midge at the Maginot crash site, Nibs begins to believe she is pregnant. It’s a development that is disturbing to Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis) and one that precipitates Nibs having her memory wiped as a quick solution.

In this week’s Alien: Earth, Nibs begins to piece together what has happened to her and who she wants to be going forward. DECIDER caught up with Alien: Earth actress Lily Newmark last week to break down all the subtle, seismic changes in Nibs this week and why Mr. Strawberry is the Gollum to the girl’s Smeagol…

Photo: FX

DECIDER: I wanted to start with how you approached playing Nibs, because I talked to so many other actors, about how they saw on set the six of you had your own approaches to kind of channeling that childlike innocence or wonder. I’m curious how did you channel her childish mindset?

LILY NEWMARK: Well, I think in terms of reconnecting with my inner child, that wasn’t so tricky for me, because I think that’s sort of naturally…. Like, it’s always kind of fizzing within me. That’s never gone away. Whether it be my naivety or curiosity or bluntness, I think I’ve always retained whatever childlike essence that people in this show are trying to capitalize on. So I didn’t find that tricky to rediscover, but I think when it comes to Nibs’s previous trauma, that’s kind of tiptoed around, I had to do a little bit of a backstory for her, because there’s not a huge amount of exposition when it comes to the the hybrids’ backstories. So it was just about keeping a journal in Nibs’s perspective. We did a lot of group work with a child psychologist called April and we had a movement coach called Dan, and both Dan and April worked with us to tap into the physicality of eight to twelve-year-olds. I’m playing the youngest because I’m eight years old. So there’s quite a big difference in terms of how you hold yourself as an eight-year-old as opposed to a twelve-year-old. That helped a lot with bonding and figuring out the behavioral dynamics within the Lost Boys.

The whole sequence of when Nibs thinks she’s pregnant remains one of the more haunting parts of the show to me. Because what would make a little girl think just jump to pregnancy after that encounter with the Eye Midge? When I talked to Noah about it, he just kind of hat-tipped to the trauma that she’s come with without going too deep. What was your interpretation of that situation, and why do you think she assumes or jumps to proclaiming, “I’m going to have a baby named Clarissa”?

Well, I spoke to Ugla [Hauksdóttir], who is the director of Episode 4 — which is the pregnancy reveal episode — about this, because I don’t know how familiar you are with the Alien IP, but there’s a lot of symbolism within Alien of motherhood and rape. So we did discuss that, even though it’s a very dark path to go down, but we did explore whether the trauma that no one’s willing to talk about may have been that and that is manifesting, through this phantom pregnancy.

But it also could be a malfunctioning of her circuit. The sensation she may be feeling in her abdomen, she associates with pregnancy, but in fact, it’s maybe overheating, something like that. We didn’t come to a concrete conclusion, because, I mean, I didn’t write Nibs. So I didn’t want to take full ownership of her story, but I did have to find a good enough cause for her to respond in this way.

I think the overall thing is she’s just trying to have some autonomy in the situation, bodily autonomy. She’s being told that she is an adult. She is a female adult and what are female adults capable of? Well, they’re capable of pregnancy. So, I think she’s taken an idea and she’s run with it to an extreme.

Speaking of ownership, in Episode 7, I feel like Nibs is very upset about the implication that her memories have been tampered with. She says, “What’s ours is ours, and nobody can take it.” Did you also sort of see a correlation in that line of thought, where she definitely sees self-possession as the most sacred thing to her?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, she’s really finding her strength, in that scene. As you say, in that line. I think she’s been sort of so fragile and vulnerable, previously in the series, and there’s something that clicks with her, where she realizes her power. She’s got all these new friends to back her up, and, you can sort of see them all kind of galvanizing each other. They don’t necessarily have to have special powers, superpowers, to feel that strength, because they’ve got such a strong natural bond with each other. But it helps that they’re also superhuman.

Photo: FX

On that note, I noticed later on in the episode, during the showdown with the soldiers, initially, Nibs starts to growl and become more animalistic. Even the sound design kind of overlays her growling with the Xenomorph’s chittering and Wendy’s chittering. Talk me through Nibs becoming feral. Can you see her becoming more alienistic?

I loved unleashing that growl. It’s so cathartic and I think, especially, a lot of young girls will probably resonate with that growl. There’s something feral about young girls that isn’t explored enough in TV and film that I personally really resonate with. Like, I wanted to be more animalistic when I was younger, but when you go into institutions like school that kind of thing is repressed. I think it’s so exciting and it comes back to finding your power as a young person. What does that look like? It doesn’t necessarily have to be with words, but you can be tapping into something primal. The growl, I think, taps into something that is natural. Like a robot wouldn’t growl, but an animal would.

And, yeah, it would be so exciting to see where that growl goes in the future for Nibs. What that might look like, I don’t know yet, but it’s exciting.

There’s a really great scene in this episode where they come upon the graveyard. So much happens in this short space that feels so profound. I’m curious what seeing her own grave does for Nibs and how do you see the relationship between Rose and Nibs at this point?

Yeah, what was interesting about that scene is I naturally approached it as a devastating circumstance to find myself in, but it was redirected in a way where it was actually freeing to literally put Rose to rest and start this new chapter as something else. For it to be inspiring and liberating for Nibs to move on. So there’s definitely some closure in visiting her old self in the graveyard.

Photo: FX

Jumping to the end of Episode 7, there’s that great sequence where Nibs threatens the soldier with her stuffed animal, Mr. Strawberry. Mr. Strawberry seems so important to Nibs. How did you see that little critter? Is Mr. Strawberry her emotional support?

I think Mr. Strawberry acts as an extension of the part of Nibs who’s afraid to speak. I kind of made him into a ventriloquist doll, because I thought, “Well, this is a wonderful tool to say the things that I’m too afraid to say.” So he’s kind of half emotional support doll, half… You know, it’s a bit like Smeagol and Gollum. There’s kind of what he wants to say and what he should say. Nibs is saying what she probably should say, but Mr. Strawberry is saying what she’s really thinking.

This interview has been edited and formatted for clarity.