From Kinky Boots to Children of Men to The Old Guard, Chiwetel Ejiofor has never not been perfect, and it’s wonderful to see him continuing that winning streak in the first trailer for Showtime’s The Man Who Fell to Earth. The new series is inspired by both Walter Tevis’s novel and the 1976 David Bowie film—and has the also-perfect Bill Nighy in the role of Thomas Newton, the alien Bowie previously played.
Ejiofor plays a new alien, Faraday, who is summoned by Newton and “arrives on Earth at a turning point in human evolution and must confront his own past to determine our future,” according to the show’s summary. His world was dying, and ours is on the same course—and that’s where scientist Justin Falls (Naomie Harris) comes in.
The trailer focuses at first on Justin and Faraday, as she discovers his arrival and agrees to help him, but then it shifts to the inevitable: powerful forces finding out there’s an alien among us, and trying to capture him for their own purposes.
This cast is almost unfairly stacked; along with Ejiofor, Nighy, and Harris, that’s Jimmi Simpson (Westworld) and Kate Mulgrew (Star Trek: Voyager) who you’ll spot in this trailer. Co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet both hail from Paramount’s extended Star Trek empire, so this is hardly their first time exploring a story about aliens and hope and saving worlds.
The Man Who Fell to Earth has a two-episode premiere on April 24th.
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