Alien Star Reveals They Slapped Sigourney Weaver for Real — In a Scene You Never Saw

At New York Comic Con, the Alien crew got back together, and Veronica Cartwright dropped a great bit of behind-the-scenes lore: she really did slap Sigourney Weaver while filming a scene that never made the theatrical cut. The story got big laughs, and yes, Weaver chimed in too. Bonus: she also teased Ripley potentially coming back.

The slap that actually happened

Cartwright, who played Lambert in the 1979 sci-fi horror classic, recalled shooting a confrontation where Lambert goes at Ripley for refusing to break quarantine and let the away team back on the Nostromo. You can see this scene in the Director's Cut, not the original release.

• In the scene, Lambert is supposed to slap Ripley. Cartwright went for it; Weaver kept ducking out of the way.
• It became such a dance that Ridley Scott stepped in and told Cartwright to stop pulling the punch and just land it.
• Cartwright then feinted, waited for Weaver to duck, and backhanded her. It connected. Weaver was understandably not thrilled, but she powered through like the pro she is.
• Weaver recalled that, yes, she took a couple of real hits during that shoot.
• The whole tale crushed with the crowd at the reunion panel.

'Would you just f---ing get her this time?'

That was Scott's instruction, as Cartwright told it. Simple, direct, and, well, effective.

So, is Ripley coming back?

Maybe. Weaver said she has spoken with Disney about possibly returning as Ellen Ripley. She has read a script from original Alien producer Walter Hill and is considering working with him to figure out the rest of Ripley's story. If it happens, expect something different: not another round of crawling through air shafts, but a new angle on Alien that she described as scary and anchored by a strong script.