Alden portrays John the Savage, an outsider from the gritty Savage Land who’s not buying what the polished exterior of New London is selling. Brave New World tackles many still-relevant social themes while also not taking itself seriously. Fascinated with the Spanish culture, Alden confesses his passion for Spain, his favorite country in the world, where he goes every time he can get in a plane and escape from his reality.

Q: You started your career with Tetro, Francis Ford Coppola movie, and with him you went to   Argentina and Spain?

A: That meant the world to me. He has always been one of, if not, my favorite filmmaker, and I have always loved his work, and so getting the opportunity, especially in my first movie, was such an enormous gift, and it was one of the best times I’ve had. We filmed in Argentina and Madrid, and he and I developed a really wonderful relationship. And he’s been a real mentor to me ever since and extended an enormous amount of generosity.

Q: You have been in Madrid a few times?

A: I was actually looking at pictures of Madrid some days ago, now that we can’t travel anymore. I remember my first film that was called Tetro, that Francis Ford Coppola directed, we went to Madrid together and that was the first time I’ve seen it and I always wanted to come back to Spain. It’s one of my favorite countries in the world. I went to Mallorca just after finishing shooting this show because my parents were there and I wanted to be with them for a few days and Oh my god, I loved the island. Walking around Madrid with Francis to the Reina Sofia and the Prado is one of my precious memories from my travels.

Q: Do you speak Spanish?

A: I can speak a little bit as I grew up in LA and everyone knows some Spanish. I have to say that Don Quixote is one of my favorite books of all times

 Q: Your new show is based in Aldous Huxley’s book. Have you read it?

A: I read the book when they offer me the show. I must say that the way they adapted the character and the way they brought it in our time was very inventive and really smart.  In the book John has this romantic and large sense of what life should be and that it’s very much about love and feelings and emotional things and depth. And that looks different in the series but it’s still the same plight and the same cause, which is this sense that life should be more and people should be giving themselves to feelings.

Q: What do you like about playing a series where you have more time to develop the character?

A: You have a lot more scenes, you have a lot more work to do in a way. That is really great, because I love acting and you have to do all kinds of different scenes and also to explore parts of the character that you would not necessarily do in a film as it doesn’t have to be on the same kind of focus that a film story typically needs to.

Q: How would you compare this dystopian with the world of Han Solo?

A: They are in the same genre but they couldn’t be more different in a way. Star Wars is kind of taking you in that incredible fantasy world and this is really about our world. Is using this kind of extreme version of our world to understand the live we are living in a way.

Q: You ever though that a science fiction character would be so relatable to the lives we are living now?

A: Yeah. That is what I thought about this and reminded me of some science fiction books that I read that I loved, because these stories are about human beings and their stories, we long for the things we are afraid of, stay pretty similar no matter how much the world changes, those feelings still are the same. The fact that this was really rooted in the emotional lives of the characters made it feel more timeless and humorous.

Q: Did you gave anything from you to the character?

A: This is a character that runs his world, is treated very poorly, bullied, treated very poorly and so he is scaping to this romantic fantasy world but at the same time, in the world he lives in, he is very angry and cynical. So those sides of him were really well written and didn’t need any input from my part.

Q: The trauma we are living with the pandemic gives context to the story of John?

A: Yes. We didn’t know, obviously, when we were making the show that this will happen, but there is, definitely, an element of the world falling apart in the fiction and in reality. Sometimes it’s a very doomsday feeling but the hope is that we are creating a new world in its place and that is the arc of the series and that is, hopefully, the changeling chapter that we are in now.

Q: How the pandemic affected you

A: I was really lucky. I was here (Los Angeles) with my family and I just wrapped the series a few months before and I spent most of the time in lockdown working on films that I’m writing and I have a film club where we watch movies from around the world and talk every week about them. That has been keeping me going. Q: Any movie that you recommend from your film club?

A: Yes. There is a film called The Get that is an Israeli movie that is really fantastic. We watch a movie called Christmas Tale that is French, We watch Life and Death of Coronel Blimp, I don’t think we watched a Spanish film yet although we are going to watch an Almodóvar movie soon.

Q: Is this show going to have another season?

A: They are writing a second season but I don’t know how it’s going to work as most of productions are stopped. They certainly are preparing one. The main difference for me working in a platform is the change of directors. In a film you have one director and you trust them and you follow their orders. In this case it’s the showrunner the one who dictates the action.

Q: There are just so many interesting layers of this story.

A: For me, the thing that I thought stood out the most was that the show is tackling these very grand philosophical questions that are obviously put forth in the novel, and talking about society, and talking about class, and talking about sexuality, but your guide through all of it is that you’re living through the way that those things manifest themselves in the day to day, moment to moment emotional experiences of the people in these worlds. And I thought the way in which each scene was the most emotional, messy version of what these people’s lives and intimate lives are like was a more compelling way to get at that, and felt much more human and much more real than something that might be more prescriptive, or something.

Q: Do you think all the John actions are justify?

A: No. Are justify by him and his kind of this rigidus anger that he has, but I think the arc of the series is him stepping out of his victimize stage mentality and starting to understand the accountability and the consequences of his own actions

Q: How fun is to play action?

A: They are pretty fun, really fun when you get the opportunity to fly or doing something really scary. You get beat up and always get hurt.

By María Estévez

Correspondent writer