‘Alien: Romulus’ Actor Trevor Newlin On Playing A Sinister and Slimy Xenomorph
“Inside the head, there were two tubes that went across my face, all the way down my leg. Those were drool tubes,” Trevor Newlin says as he explains what goes inside a Xenomorph’s phallic skull. “And the slime. Don’t forget the slime as well.”
The 27-year-old LA-based actor previously dabbled in stage plays, ads for Amazon, and even an episode of The Mandalorian in which he appeared as a Wookie in the background. But Fede Álvarez’s acclaimed 2024 sci-fi horror Alien: Romulus marks his first major motion picture role, allowing him to step into the slimy skin of one of Hollywood’s most spine-chilling monstrosities.
In ways more than one, Álvarez’s film won over franchise fans with a back-to-basics approach. While it packed the gun-wielding action of James Cameron’s Aliens (and every sequel thereon), the Don’t Breathe and Evil Dead director toyed with enough atmospheric dread to remind you of Ridley Scott’s original Alien which relied more on slow-burning terror than in-your-face horror.
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Standing at 6’8″, Trevor Newlin’s Xenomorph similarly blends the best of Scott and Cameron’s approach, offering an alien that can tiptoe behind Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her fellow space explorers or even chase them down the decrepit Romulus hallways on all fours.
As Newlin adds, “With Fede’s direction, we got more of a more cunning and sly alien. Not just a straight-up attacker, as you saw with Aliens and things like that.”
While Alien: Romulus also pulled out a shocking alien-human hybrid in its third act (portrayed by Romanian basketballer Robert Bobroczkyi who impressively stands at 7’7″), Newlin’s Xenomorph does most of the heavy lifting throughout the film’s claustrophobic setting.
And some of the literal heaviness came from the elongated, cylindrical skull that Newlin had to wear. “The suit wasn’t bad. It was toasty for sure but the head was the hardest part, because of how much it weighs. And you have your servo motors that are controlling all the animatronics to make the lips curl up, and the mouth open,” he said.
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As Newlin’s words suggest, it’s clear that Álvarez prioritized a practical costume with minimal CGI. For the crew at Legacy Effects, the adult Xenomorph was born out of animatronics, bunraku (puppet mechanisms), and of course, Newlin’s own slender physical presence.
When Newlin moved from Texas to LA for film school, he never thought he would be playing non-human characters in costumes such as a Yeti (in an Amazon advertisement), a Wookie, or a Xenomorph. But it was one of his college tutors who suggested that he could dabble in such roles due to his physical resemblance to Doug Jones, the horror genre veteran whose makeup-heavy filmography includes the Amphibian Man in The Shape of Water, Silver Surfer in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and the aquatic humanoid Abe Sapien in Hellboy.
Newlin did get the chance to meet Jones and even took down some pointers to get into this field of acting. Fast forward to now, he is playing an otherworldly creature that’s been serving as nightmare fuel since 1979.
Coming to his inspirations, Newlin naturally studied the body language of all his predecessors. Nigerian visual artist Bolaji Badejo inaugurated the role in the first Alien, fitting his 6’10” frame into a haunting suit born out of Swiss artist HR Giger’s psychosexual alien designs. The part didn’t require any spoken dialogue but a lot of hissing, drooling, and crawling.
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As the franchise expanded with sequels, prequels, and even crossovers like Alien vs Predator, the reptilian extra-terrestrial changed several performers. At times, it was the visual effects artists who themselves volunteered to play the alien. Oscar-winning special effects supervisor Tom Woodruff Jr did so in many entries of the franchise (even playing the “Predalien” in one of the AvP crossovers). And a special mention needs to go to the adorable whippet dog who was the original choice to play the Xenomorph in Alien 3.
The films aside, a major source of inspiration was also the Xenomorph from the 2014 video game Alien: Isolation. Dubbed by fans as “Stompy”, this alien was too smart and stealthy to pop out of nowhere, giving many a player a mini-heart attack in the dim-lit levels of this first-person shooter.
Newlin said, “Fede is a huge fan of Alien: Isolation. So, I looked up how Stompy moves as well. Actually, I looked at Alien: Isolation a lot for inspiration for movement.”
For Newlin, being the alien marks a full-circle moment. Raised in a household that didn’t consume much horror, the Texas boy was exposed only to a few scenes before he actually saw the entirety of Ridley Scott’s classic. Call it a coincidence or divine intervention but Newlin always felt attached to the film’s titular biomechanical beauty.
He said, “I was always like, man, you know, I have a similar build to that guy. And, here we are in 2024, and I’m in that suit.”
Alien: Romulus is currently playing in theaters.
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