‘Alien: Earth’ star Sydney Chandler flaked out on Variety’s cover shoot & video

Alien: Earth premieres on FX in a few weeks. This is Noah Hawley’s take on the ever-expanding Alien franchise, and this is the first-ever TV series made within the “franchise.” The series stars Timothy Olyphant and Sydney Chandler in the lead roles. Chandler is the 29-year-old daughter of Kyle Chandler, best known for Friday Night Lights, Zero Dark Thirty, etc. Sydney is a nepo baby, with a slim CV for a 29-year-old, but she’s gotten rave reviews for her performance in Alien: Earth – people who have screened the series say that she’s a stand-out and she’s terrific. Which is why she was supposed to be front-and-center for the promotion for the show. Variety planned to put Sydney on their cover alongside Olyphant and Hawley. But Sydney and her team screwed it up completely, and Variety is calling her out:

Her agent texts us: “She’s coming.” Then, minutes later, her publicist writes: “No. She is not coming. Spoke to her just now. Her stylist and glam are not responding. She’s also very sick.”

It’s the day of the photo shoot, and the star of FX’s would-be summer smash is missing. Sydney Chandler, who plays Wendy on “Alien: Earth,” is supposed to appear on Variety’s cover with her co-star Timothy Olyphant and the show’s creator, Noah Hawley. One day before the shoot, though she had agreed to be photographed, Chandler made it known (through reps) that she wasn’t willing to participate in the kind of video interview that is the standard ask at Variety — as at other publications. Prolonged negotiations continued until the morning of the shoot.

At first, one of Chandler’s reps voiced the actor’s concern about playing a game with “two older men” (in other words, her co-star and showrunner, who are, respectively, 57 and 58). The game, the comic test “How Well Do They Know Each Other?,” seemed innocuous to us — everyone from Ariana Grande to Ryan Reynolds to Daniel Craig has done it in the past. But to demonstrate good faith, we offered to show Chandler sample questions. Then, she sent a list of ones we’d never ask. (We don’t ever offer question approval, and there’s good reason why: “How many ‘Alien’ films are there?” was high on Chandler’s list.) After that, she changed her mind and decided a game on video wasn’t something she felt comfortable doing at all. Now, on the morning of the shoot, after some convincing from her agent, we hear she will come. Then Chandler decides, after all that — never mind, she can’t make it.

It’s a fact of life for magazine journalists that dealing with talent can be a roller coaster; no shoot is ever easy. Chandler, at 29, is just emerging, having grown up adjacent to the industry, but not in it — her father, with whom she recorded her audition tape for “Alien: Earth,” is Emmy winner Kyle Chandler, but the actor and his wife, Kathryn, raised Chandler outside Austin, not in Los Angeles. In our first conversation, before the shoot — she was enthusiastic about the show, if clear-eyed about how challenging the production had been. So all of this comes as something of a shock: What happened?

“I’m just a private person,” she says in a subsequent phone interview. She says her opting out was simply drawing a firm boundary, not a response to any problem. “I’m new to press — it’s a bit out of my comfort zone. I was more than happy to talk about anything and everything about the show; that’s what I’m here to promote.”

Hawley, the veteran TV creator who’s made five seasons of “Fargo” for FX, is also dispirited by Chandler’s absence from the shoot. “The show is built around Sydney’s character, and the work she did as a professional was tremendous,” he says afterward. “I’m disappointed that my female-centric show, based on a female-facing franchise, does not have my lead actress on the cover. It felt awkward to be there with Tim without her.”

He tells me he hasn’t talked to Chandler about her decision. “I tend to feel like that promotional relationship that everybody has with the Disney Corporation is their own,” he says. “I don’t have to showrun the publicity.”

[From Variety]

“I’m new to press — it’s a bit out of my comfort zone.” People would still call out these kinds of unprofessional antics from an ingenue in her late teens, but ultimately it would be a “live and learn” situation – she would be called out, she would learn her lesson, and make the necessary professional adjustments. But a 29-year-old flaking out on VARIETY? For a cover shoot? And disrespecting her showrunner and costar, who is also a beloved veteran actor? Yiiikes. I also don’t understand Sydney’s beef with those Variety videos – most outlets do videos where the actors play games or quiz each other these days, and for good reason. Those videos are usually more widely viewed than the cover stories. Those videos ARE promotion and they work really well, especially if they go viral. What a mess. How unprofessional.

This week’s cover story:

‘Alien: Earth’ Is Wildly Ambitious, Expensive and Stars a Talented Actor Who Refuses to Play by Hollywood’s Rules. Inside FX’s Risky Bet for a New Blockbuster Serieshttps://t.co/hp65DhoBtu pic.twitter.com/ZyuVYCc0vZ

— Variety (@Variety) July 23, 2025

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.