Alexander Siddig Interview: Skylines

Over the years, Alexander Siddig has made his presence known on a number of beloved television shows. To this day, he's still best known for his game-changing role as Julian Bashir in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and he also turned heads with roles on 24 and Game of Thrones, just to name a couple of his more well-known works. Siddig's latest project, the sci-fi adventure, Skylines, puts the actor in a position of authority, as the leader of a strike team sent on a mission to a dangerous alien planet.

For Skylines, Siddig gets to be "delicious" in a a meaty role that evokes the hammiest moments of Ronny Cox in Robocop and Total Recall, according to writer/director Liam O'Donnell. It's a scenery-chewing performance, but in the best possible way, and nearly every gravitas-laced word delivered by Siddig is worthy of rousing applause. In the second half of the film, he kicks into overdrive, but to say anything beyond that would spoil some of Skylines' most exciting surprises.

While promoting the release of Skylines, Alexander Siddig spoke to Screen Rant about his work on the film, and about his career in Hollywood. He talks about getting to cut loose and go completely wild with his role in Skylines, and shares his glowing opinion of co-star Lindsey Morgan. He reflects on his time on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a series that was misunderstood by its own producers at the time, but which has gone on to become one of the most beloved science fiction series ever made. Finally, he laments the fate of his character on Game of Thrones, just as he was settling into the role... Though an argument could be made that he made it out just in time, depending on one's views of the final years of HBO's fantasy epic.

Skylines is out now in theaters, on VOD, and Digital.

It is a delight to get to talk to you, because I've gotta get this off my chest. They say we're in a "golden age of television," with all these big shows that are getting such critical acclaim for their complex storytelling and difficult themes. And I'm here going, "Yeah, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was doing that 25 years ago!" But it was a sci-fi show so the critics didn't pay attention.

(Laughs) Nobody noticed! Everybody looked down on sci-fi. Sci-fi was seen as the bottom dweller of the TV world.

You guys on that show were doing stuff that pushed the envelope and rewrote the rule book.

Thank you, that's quite the compliment. I will pass that on to Ira (Steven Behr, showrunner).

Maybe this is a little bit of an exaggeration, but you were, like, the first brown sex symbol!

(Laughs)

It's like, Omar Sharif, and then you. Alright, let's jump forward, we're talking Skylines. You are delicious in this movie.

It was such good fun to play. It was really good fun. You don't often get the chance to do that sort of stuff, where they're just, "Hey, do whatever you like. Just enjoy!"

Is it like that, is there a level of trust with Liam where he's like, "We're making the kind of movie where you're gonna have a good time and we want everyone to have a good time while watching you."

That's exactly what he said. And you used the word "delicious," and that's a word he asked me to be. He actually gave me that direction. He said, "Just be more delicious." That's a true quote! He gave me free reign to just go and enjoy. The only difficult thing was to just trust him, because every actor has problems trusting directors. I totally trusted him after about five days, when I realized we were making the same film. And that's really hard with this sort of film, because if some people aren't on the same page, it goes horribly wrong. If it's not got that light behind the eyes, and the comedy at the base of it, holding it up because it's supposed to be that funny... It's not supposed to be dark. It's not 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's one of the great movies, but this is a pastiche of a whole bunch of different films, put together and designed to be a real roller coaster, a fun ride for the audience. I think Skylines is an honest movie, in that sense. I just love that. And when I realized Liam was making that kind of movie, I was 110% on board. It was so much fun to do. It was just great.

That's awesome, and your castmates get to have a lot of fun, too.

Lindsey Morgan was delicious, too. (Laughs) She does something that not many actors do. Not many actors can pull off the charm and the ferocity, the "steely bitch," all in one kind of bundle. Famously, Angelina Jolie and other actors like that couldn't really pull it off in movies like Tomb Raider, it was the one thing. I don't know if you remember that, but there have been numerous attempts. They tried to make Demi Moore into an action hero, but she just couldn't pull off the tough stuff. It was placed, and not found. But Lindsey just has it in spades. She has the right combination. You may have seen the birth of... If luck is nice to her, she'll be a truly huge movie star.

I'm sure there are great things in her future.

She just pings in this movie. Working with her was a pleasure.

The tone of this movie is something that lots of films struggle to lock down, but it's just so perfectly nailed here. I was talking to Liam and I said, "I'm 29 years old. I was probably the last generation that was raised in the video rental store." This is like a lost descendant of those movies that didn't have $100 million budgets, but were crafted with love and care and attitude. This movie is like a lost treasure from the video store. It's not a mega-budget four-quadrant story, but it's a damn good time!

Exactly. Like, we're not gonna get huge stars. We're gonna get Alexander Siddig. That's what we've got. And, of course, James Cosmo and Rhona Mitra, but this is not A-list. It's really just generosity that makes these movies work. I'm amazed that... At 29, you weren't really around for the last time these movies were being made on a regular level.

It's a great lament of mine.

Roger Corman was making these kinds of movies. Even The Rocky Horror Picture Show is this kind of movie. They're wildly different, but that's the spirit of it. To just come in and have fun. That's really the whole point of it.

That's so funny, I just showed my girls, my nieces, Rocky Horror for the first time.

What a treat for them!

It is kind of like this movie. Because you're on Earth and you're like, what's going on here, what's the tone of this? But as soon as they go to space, or do the Time Warp, it's just like, "I'm in, let's rock!"

Yeah! It's unashamedly camp. It's pop. It's a really pop movie, and unashamedly so. Neil Marshall makes this kind of movie. They're just great. You look at the movies now, and they're not like this. They're either like, "This is what it's like visiting the Pope" because they're so serious, or it's a huge, $400 million Marvel/DC universe thing. All of which are great, but nobody is making these little things that just go, "Hey, enjoy me for what I am. I'm not going to tie you in to any merchandising. You don't need to get the app."

When I go to the movie theaters, or when I used to, back in the old days, I'm a scrooge. I'm always sitting there, dead silent, and I get mad at people who are noisy. But I watched Skylines all by myself on the screener they sent me, and I was standing up and cheering. That's the energy of this movie.

That's fantastic to hear.

Like, when your character reveals his true intentions, I'm like, "HELL YES! LET'S GO!"

"Get the f*** out of my way!" There are some lucky lines in there. It's really cool. If viewers are willing to invest in the first twenty minutes you have to have in a movie like this, the setup, the build, the characters, and all that, the "previous episodes" you have to have in a third iteration of a story, if the audience is willing to go there, we'll do all the heavy lifting from then on, and you can just sit back and enjoy.

That's the logline of the movie. "Hey, this is awesome, just trust us, you're gonna love it."

Even if you don't like sci-fi, this is just so glam. I compare it to... Do you know Muse, the band? It's Muse, and not Radiohead. That is basically where we're at, with a little thrash metal at the base.

You've had a pretty cool career. You've been in some of my favorite shows. 24 and Star Trek. There's a crossover of producers on that. Did you get 24 because of the contacts you made on DS9?

You know, I may have. But I didn't know any of those guys on 24 by the time I got there. Brannon Braga was on 24, and he was on Deep Space Nine for, like, a minute at the beginning, but then he went over to Voyager, I think.

Right. I know that whole thing, the legend of the producers being, like, "DS9 is too weird for us, let's make a more traditional show,Voyager" but I don't want to throw any undue shade...

No, it's the truth. It's the way it is, and that's fine. And we survived it, and now Deep Space Nine is pretty cool for most kids! They don't have a problem with it at all. The proof is in the pudding.

I was a little kid when that was on, but my dad liked Voyager more because he was more old-timey, and I'm an Original Series guy myself, but DS9 was really going into uncharted storytelling territory, you know?

It changed it up. It just went, "Hey guys, watch this..." And a ton of people came with us! And now, more than ever, because of Netflix and CBS and wherever they're showing it, there's tons of youngsters watching it and going, "Wow, this is great!" It's one of the highest rated Star Trek shows now, which is hilarious.

Like, even if you're not as recognized as you should have been at the time, did that let you "run the asylum," so to speak?

Yeah. That's exactly what happened. They went, "We don't care. Just do whatever you want, because really, we don't care." The ratings were at 10 million, and that's a respectable number, but it's not a hit. So they were like, "Go do whatever the f*** you want."

And you were also famous for popping up on Game of Thrones, and then kind of unexpectedly suddenly killed off, which...

Yes. Oops!

Is there any bad blood when you get caught off-guard like that? Or did you know you were gonna be gone?

I was angry. It wasn't bad blood, though. I was angry because I was scheduled for another season. I was like, dudes, I was just getting into this guy, and I'm loving this dude... But I realized, because they were gonna end the show, they found out they were gonna stop the show, they decided to call it a day, and they decided he was a loose end they couldn't tie. And now we know how many loose ends they really couldn't tie off by the end of the show, so that was probably a smart move, to get rid of me, business-wise.

Depending on how you look at it, you got out just in time, but that's a different conversation.