When he was 5, a Muppet-inspired Alan Tudyk burst through the swinging doors of a cowboy-themed restaurant in Texas and snarled, “I’m Bad Bart and I’m here for some burgers!” The place went wild, he recalls. “My mother was ‘Oh, my God’ embarrassed, but the whole audience” — Tudyk catches himself — “the whole restaurant laughed. Even back then I couldn’t keep it hidden; I was trying to make people laugh.
” Sprawled on an enormous pumpkin-colored sofa in the Beachwood Canyon home he shares with his choreographer wife, Charissa, 14-year-old cockapoo Raisin and mutt Clara, 12, Tudyk reflects on his journey from live-wire child to “Resident Alien” star. The Syfy series, introduced in 2019, casts Tudyk as the pizza-loving, profanity-spewing title character who crash-lands in rural America on a mission to destroy humanity. He kills small-town doctor Harry Vanderspeigle, shape-shifts into his body, learns English by binge-watching “Law & Order” and tries to fit in with the charmingly quirky citizens of Patience, Colo.
At the start, Tudyk says, “Harry knows nothing about being a human and loves the fact that he’s smarter than everyone. He’s also very arrogant.” By the end of Season 1, Harry’s shed his first tear after his only friend, nurse Asta (Sara Tomko), catches him in a lie.
In Season 2, Harry resists the temptation to eat his own son, alien-human hybrid Bridget, “because he’s delicious” and defies orders to return to the home pla.