Alien: Earth Prosthetics Artist Admits Chestbursters Had Him Sweating — Huge Pressure to Live Up to John Hurt’s Iconic Scene

Alien finally jumped to TV with Alien: Earth, and if there was one thing they absolutely could not mess up, it was the chestburster. The show knew it. Fans knew it. And according to lead prosthetics artist Steven Painter, he really knew it.

Heads up: spoilers for Alien: Earth episode 7 ahead.

Painter told Bloody Disgusting that the chestburster sequence was the one that kept him up the longest — as in, he spent about a year just working it out in his head. When showrunner Noah Hawley brought it up, he specifically name-checked the John Hurt moment from the original Alien. No pressure or anything, just recreate one of the most famous scenes in sci-fi history on a TV schedule.

The show saves its version for episode 7, the penultimate hour of the season, where a freshly born Xenomorph tears its way out of Arthur. It is, very deliberately, a modern echo of the original film’s Kane scene — same nightmare, different poor soul.

'I approached it very carefully and watched the original sequence over and over. I broke it down and took elements from it, but then updated it for modern times. What I really wanted to do was expand on it. So we see the whole body of the creature now, and it is in daylight. We gave ourselves a lot of work to do, but hopefully we have given the fans what they wanted to see.'

How they leveled up the chestburster

• Painters long game: he spent roughly a year mentally engineering the sequence before building it.
• Homework first: he rewatched the original chestburster beat on repeat, broke it down, and borrowed select pieces.
• Modernized, not remade: the classic structure is there, but updated for a contemporary TV audience.
• Big swing choices: you see the creature’s full body this time, and it happens in daylight — a bold move that exposes every seam if the effect is not rock solid.
• They knew it would be a bear: by pushing visibility, the team gave themselves extra work to make it convincing.
• The goal: honor the John Hurt moment while delivering something fans have not quite seen before on the small screen.

All episodes of Alien: Earth are streaming now — Hulu in the US, Disney Plus in the UK.