Why Linda Hamilton Feels 'Like a Miserable Failure' on 'Resident Alien' Set

Linda Hamilton is having a blast playing General Eleanor McCallister on Resident Alien, but there’s one challenge she wasn’t expecting to face on the Syfy series.

“I feel like a miserable failure, [because] in every scene I do, there is so much great comedy going on around me. There’s some absolutely brilliant comedians on that show. The women are great. And I’m the ‘straight man,'” Hamilton, 67, quipped during an exclusive interview with Us Weekly.

Hamilton made attempts to add some humor to her character, who is very by the book, but it was all to no avail.

“I’ll get a scene and I can’t give anything away. But I’ll go, ‘Oh, this is funny.’ And I’ll work it and work it and say, ‘Oh, I can really do this with that line,'” she recalled. “Then I get to set and they’re like, ‘The way you’re doing that — don’t do that.’ I’m the straight man. That’s my job. So everybody is really funny except for me. Somebody’s got to do that part.”

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Resident Alien, which premiered on Syfy in January 2021, follows an alien (Alan Tudyk) who is set to wipe out humanity. Instead, the extraterrestrial being lands in Colorado and takes on the identity of the town’s physician, Harry. Season 3 sets up a new partnership between Harry and General McCallister as they work together to take down the Grey aliens inhabiting Earth.

“Now that Harry and the general are working together, it’s just more opportunities [for my character] to become more frustrated with him. It’s harder to be on his team than to [not be],” Hamilton teased. “It doesn’t necessarily make her life any easier that she’s working with Harry. So I enjoy that we’re on the same side. We are so alike, but [Harry’s] got his secrets.”

She added: “Harry’s reality and the general’s reality are very far apart, and that’s good. So I don’t have to particularly get [together] with Alan to make [those onscreen] decisions because it’s all set up there in our characters. But it’s just really more the general trying to keep up with Harry. She needs him, and whenever anything might seem to be unfolding a certain way, Harry’s going to mess it up somehow.”

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Hamilton went on to praise Tudyk, 52, for making their scenes that much more fun.

“[For me], it’s really just trying to keep up with Alan, who’s so good and so gifted and then continues to build the scene as we go. So he might add something and it’s very interesting because comedy is all about timing,” she noted. “But you don’t quite know when he’s done. So he keeps me on my toes. You’re just so in love with what he’s doing. He has a way of just adding a little something that will absolutely break your heart.”

Despite not being able to flex her comedic muscles on the show, Hamilton still gushed about her experience filming Resident Alien.

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“When I look for work, I do look for something that I haven’t necessarily done already. I don’t want to just sort of recycle the same character,” she shared. “[With Resident Alien], it was the comedy around it — not even for my character — [that interested me]. I just love the writing. I love [showrunner] Chris Sheridan and I believe in him beyond 100 percent. … His writing is so wonderful, and sometimes you just read a project and say, ‘I want to be a part of that.'”

Hamilton also told Us she’s not ruling out more projects centered around humor in the future, adding, “I love comedy. I don’t know if I will ever get to do the comedy that I would love to do. I just love comedy. It’s kind of like the final frontier for me too.”

Resident Alien airs on Syfy Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET and will be available to stream on Peacock the next day.