Ridley Scott returns to the universe he created, with ALIEN: COVENANT, a new chapter in his groundbreaking ALIEN franchise. The crew of the colony ship Covenant, bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world. When they uncover a threat beyond their imagination, they must attempt a harrowing escape.

LYONNE: Well, it's a curious thing, acting. Of course, we can see from the outside just how brilliant and transformative a person is. I recently watched Fantastic Beasts, and what really struck me was that your character walks so different than you do. Her gait is like a detective woman's. She could be a gruff policeman from the '50s. She could be Dennis Franz in NYPD Blue.

WATERSTON: That's who I modeled the character after, that's so weird to hear you say that.

LYONNE: But actually, was this something you were really mindful of? Or did it just happen organically?

WATERSTON: I think everything happens organically. You mine for clues. It's all immersive and stuff you can use comes out of that immersion. I don't really like to wear wigs in movies because I like to look like the character all the time. But the big one with that movie was the costumes. When I went for the first fitting, [the costume designer] Colleen Atwood had pulled some skirts and stuff. And as we started working on it, I asked to try on some men's trousers and then we developed this idea that everything my character wore was stuff that was in her parents' closet. She had been orphaned as a child, but lived in her parents' old apartment.

So I figured, because she couldn't really give a damn or be bothered to buy herself anything, she'd be in some modified outfit of her parents. We had some men's trousers and took them in at the waist and that made them too short. And then with these men's shoes, which were just a little bit too big for me, it changed the way that I moved. Costumes so often change how you feel. I would normally never be caught dead in a skirt nearly as short as the stuff that I wore in Inherent Vice. But when you find yourself in one, it completely changes you.

LYONNE: You yourself have really striking style. Everything you own is something I immediately covet, even though I'm five feet tall and you're, like, six feet tall and it would make no sense on me. I'm like, "I need to start wearing oversize slacks immediately, with overcoats." How incredible was [Beasts co-star] Samantha Morton? She's one of my all-time heroes.

WATERSTON: The more I admire someone, the more I pretend I don't know who the f--k they are—that's the way I deal with it. If I had to admit, to her face, how much I admire her, I never would have been able to shut up, or I would have probably weirded her out. So I basically ignored her. She's amazing, but we didn't really get to work together too much in that movie, unfortunately.