Bruises and scares are all in a day’s work for the ‘new Ripley’, Alien: Covenant star Katherine Waterson

ALIEN: Convenant star Katherine Waterson is tougher than she looks. The theatre-trained actorsurprised even herself on location in Sydney.

Katherine Waterston as Daniels in a scene from Alien: Covenant.

ALIEN: Covenant is Katherine Waterston’s first serious action movie role. Even she was surprised by her natural aptitude for kicking extraterrestrial butt.

“I didn’t realise what a bruiser I was until I did this movie,’’ laughs the theatre-trained New Yorker.

“I didn’t mind getting banged around a little bit. In a weird way, I kind of enjoyed it.”

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Waterston kicks extraterrestrial arse in Alien: Covenant. Picture: Mark Rogers/Twentieth Century Fox

Although critics were impressed by Waterston’s performance as Joaquin Phoenix’s ex-girlfriend in the ’70s crime comedy Inherent Vice (2014), she was hardly a household name when Ridley Scott cast her as the new Ripley in his hotly-anticipated Alien prequel.

“For 10-plus years, I would finish a job and feel like I wasn’t getting anywhere,’’ says the 37-year-old actor who made her feature film debut in Michael Clayton (2007), and who played Steve Jobs’ ex-girlfriend in the eponymously-titled Michael Fassbender biopic.

“Every time a job ended, I was back at the bottom of the ladder again. I couldn’t get any momentum. It felt like a Sisyphean task.”

Then she landed plum roles in two of the biggest non-Marvel franchises on the Hollywood production schedule — J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter spin-off, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, and Alien: Covenant, set 10 years after Scott’s 2012 prequel, Prometheus.

The director says it will take two more films to link up with his groundbreaking 1979 original, Alien, which was followed by Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992) and Alien: Resurrection (1997).

He describes the journey of Waterston’s character, Daniels, as “parallel” to that of Sigourney Weaver’s iconic action heroine, suggesting the character will be around for some time to come.

“I certainly hope so,” she says.

The critters are back for more in Scott’s prequel, Alien: Covenant.

Waterston admits to experiencing a “healthy dose of intimidation” when she turned up for her first day on set of Alien: Covenant.

“But I always feel that way. I love the process of being completely convinced I can’t do something and then certain circumstances arise where I prove myself wrong.”

The only time Waterston feels sure she can nail a role is in the lead-up to an audition.

“The minute (the producers) say yes, I think: ‘Why did they pick me? How am I going to do this?

“But the thing I love about filmmaking is that it’s a marathon not a sprint.

“You don’t do the whole film, you do the one scene. And you work at that until you get it right and then you move on. It’s only intimidating when you think about the whole endeavour.”

Waterston made sure she was in peak physical condition for the three-month plus film shoot, which started on location in New Zealand’s Milford Sound before moving to a new backlot in Potts Hill, near Bankstown, in Sydney’s southwest (used for the first time by Mad Max: Fury Road).

“I am playing a scientist. I didn’t want to look like a warrior. I just wanted to be in shape enough to not injure myself,” she says.

“But it turned out I really enjoyed doing all those stunts.

“It was such an essential part of my character’s journey that it felt wrong to relinquish those scenes to a stunt double. It felt like nobody but me could do it because it was my character.

“Although there were a few times when Ridley actually said no, someone else has to do it, because if you break your neck and we have to stop shooting for six months, it’s going to cost a f!@#ing fortune.”

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Michael Fassbender with Waterston at the world premiere of Alien: Covenant in London. Picture: Eamonn M. McCormack

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Scott films at an extraordinarily swift pace.

Most directors work with two cameras. The veteran filmmaker (Blade Runner, Gladiator, The Martian) prefers to shoot with four.

“I have done a couple of films with Martin Scorsese,” says Line Producer Dean Hood. “He will film like a page a day. Ridley films three to four pages.”

Ridley Scott directs Waterston on the Sydney set of Alien: Covenant.

That kinetic energy helped Waterson forget her sore muscles and bruises.

“It was kind of like: ‘Which ride on the fair am I going to go on today, you know?’

“There were times when I would be swinging down very quickly from up high to the ground. Then the next day I would be walking upside down on a spaceship. The day after that I would be sliding down the side of that spaceship.”

Perfecting witch Porpentina Goldstein’s spell-making technique with Fantastic Beasts’ wand coach, says Waterston, still rates as one of her strangest experiences on set.

“But it’s all so wild. I mean, there you are on set and they say: ‘okay walk over the edge of this spaceship, when you get upside down spin around three times and then you will see the alien and try to shoot it.

“When you are over the side of the spaceship, you feel the capillaries bursting on your face and all the blood rushing to your head and you can barely see and then you are shooting this gun and ... well, you know, that’s not normal.

“You go home and someone says: ‘how was your day, dear?’ I mean it’s weird, it’s weird work.”

Weird but never uneventful.

“No, and I am very grateful for that.”

Waterston says there is “nothing normal” about her job.

As well as working fast, Scott is also renowned for “keeping it real”, using as little CGI in his films as possible.

Waterston says the lifelike dummies created by the creature effects team — some dismembered, others decapitated — disturbed her almost as much as the three-metre tall “puppet” alien, created out of foam, latex and fibre glass, that was bought to life by dancer Andrew Connor.

“They were recreated body parts and faces of my friends, actors I was working with, that were so real that I sometimes thought it was the actor sitting there when it was actually some kind of stuffed version of them,“ she says.’

Waterston’s character, Daniels, taps hidden resources in the film.

But it was a stuntman dressed in mufti that really made the hairs on the back of Waterston’s neck stand up.

“I was in a big heavy space suit trying to clamber up this ladder. It wasn’t easy to do, and I could feel him swiping at me from behind.

“That’s something that Ridley has always understood, that psychological experience — he knows what he doesn’t need to show and how terrifying our imaginations can be.

“For me, not being able to see this thing, but being able to sense it from behind me, was one of the scariest things I experienced while shooting.”

Alien: Covenant opens today

Originally published as Bruises and scares are all in a day’s work for the ‘new Ripley’, Alien: Covenant star Katherine Waterson