Resident Alien Star Edi Patterson on Heather's Return, Faking Bird Barf & Getting Goofy with Alan Tudyk
Heather's reappearance couldn't come at a more inopportune moment, considering the loss of Harry's alien libido.
Earlier this week, Alan Tudyk appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live for a discussion about his many performances in the realm of science fiction. When talk turned to Resident Alien (airing new episodes on USA Network and SYFY every Friday), Tudyk wasted no time in heaping praise onto guest star Edi Patterson, whom he described as "one of the funniest people on the planet."
Patterson reciprocated that praise during an exclusive Zoom interview with USA Insider, saying: "I think he's so freaking good."
"I think that as far as improv goes, we're both coming from a similar place with it, in that we are both improvising from character, as opposed to trying to say the funniest thing," she continued. "We both know that you just improvise from character and just do the truth of your character. That's the only way it's going to get actually hilarious, or that you'll actually get to a place of it being sort of transcendent, because it's organic. We have a blast because I know that there'll come a point when we've done the scene and have it all as written, [which then allows us] to open it up. And he's really, really fun to open it up with."
In particular, Tudyk brought up the hilariously unhinged Season 3 moment where Heather spits chewed-up sunflower seeds into his mouth while Asta (Sara Tomko) and D'arcy (Alice Wetterlund) watch on in disgust.
"Like he said on Kimmel, I really do think what he said is exactly right. [The script] said, 'They kiss, it’s weird.’ All of that madness we did that night was just fully improvised," Patterson explained. "And thankfully, he trusts me, and I trust him. We just felt free to make it as wild and dumb and crazy as possible. In between takes, it was fun to think about, ‘What would a bird do?’ A little ways into doing some takes, Alan started thinking about how mama birds regurgitate into baby birds' mouths and asked me to spit food into his mouth, and I happily did it."
Edi Patterson talks Heather's return in Resident Alien Season 4
Patterson, of course, returned to the show this week as Heather, a member of the Blue Avian species and Harry Vanderspeigle's girlfriend. Her reappearance couldn't have come at a more inopportune time, however, given that Harry is currently powerless and, as a result, finds Heather's natural form utterly detestable. To make matters even more complicated, Harry's winged squeeze drops the Maury Povich-style bombshell that she became pregnant and then gave birth to a nest full of hybrid children since they last saw each other.
"Alan had sort of told me what they looked like, and they sounded really cute," she told us. "But [it wasn't] until I recently saw a little clip, [that I knew] exactly what they looked like ... They're very cute."
Not wanting to offend his paramour, Harry must feign attraction for Heather, even when she's puking into a Ziploc bag as a way to meal prep for their hungry children (the Blue Avian equivalent of pumping breast milk for human babies). As revealed in the behind-the-scenes featurette, the vomit gag was pulled off practically with a tube and fake hand.
"That was all pretty easy," Patterson revealed, also sharing that the faux puke was mostly made of oatmeal, which gave it the proper chunky viscosity. "I've done some barf stuff before, believe it or not, and this was less violent than the stuff I've done [in the past]. They had some easy rigging that made it really fun and funny. It was extra fun to have Sara and Alice there because it's fun to lock eyes with them while I'm doing something insane."
Season 4 of Resident Alien drops new episodes on Fridays on USA Network and SYFY. All episodes will be available to stream exclusively on Peacock one week after they air.
