Sigourney Weaver Is Done with ‘Alien’ Franchise: ‘I Put in My Time in Space’
Sigourney Weaver is laying Ripley to rest.
The “Alien” star confirmed that she is looking forward to another “younger” actor taking over the role of Ellen Ripley, which she originated in the 1979 space-set action film. Weaver went on to star in sequels “Aliens,” “Alien 3,” and “Alien Resurrection,” and was set to reprise the role for a 2015 installment helmed by Neill Blomkamp. The fifth “Alien” film would have sidestepped “Alien 3” and seen Ripley partnering with Corporal Dwayne Hicks (Michael Biehn).
“There are all kinds of younger actors taking this kind of role,” Weaver told Total Film (via Games Radar). “And there was an ‘Alien’ that I really wanted to do with Neill Blomkamp and we didn’t get to do that, but, you know, that ship has sailed. I’m very happy doing what I’m doing. I put in my time in space.”
The “Avatar” actress added that “Alien” director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Dan O’Bannon made history by writing Ripley to be a strong female lead.
“They made Ripley a woman, without making her this helpless creature,” Weaver said. “I think I was very lucky. These were men who were creating this woman character, but they liked and respected strong women.”
Back in 2021, Weaver reflected on the franchise as a whole and called sequel “Aliens” the “most satisfying” saga for her character.
“The best-constructed story for the character to tell was in ‘Aliens,’ just because Jim [Cameron] has such an amazing sense of structure of story,” Weaver said at the time. “To take this character out of hyper-sleep, have no one believe her, have her be exiled into this limbo land where no one believes her and her family’s dead. The whole set-up for Ripley in ‘Aliens’ and then what she ends up doing and… finding this new family by the end. The whole structure of that story, to me, was gold.”
Yet starring in “Alien” made Weaver feel typecasted for years afterward, especially coming from the comedy world originally.
“Most of what I’d done was comedy onstage. I thought, ‘God, when am I going to get back to that?’” Weaver said. “That has been frustrating because a good comedy is hard to find, and so are love stories — I love them, but they couldn’t really imagine me in a love story. If I came in the room, all the producers would sit down, and if there was a leading man, he’d usually sit down, too, because they wanted someone different, someone much smaller.”
