Editor’s note: The below interview contains major spoilers for Alien: Earth Episode 7.

There’s no question that the hybrids of Noah Hawley‘s FX series Alien: Earth are already dealing with a lot of stress — imagine the hormonal turmoil of being a kid who suddenly finds themselves in an adult body, for starters — but no one has been going through it quite as much as Slightly, played by Adarsh Gourav. From the beginning, the awkward, shy hybrid became an easy target for manipulation at the hands of Weyland-Yutani’s cyborg security officer, Morrow (Babou Ceesay), who preyed on Slightly’s vulnerabilities in order to secure one of the alien specimens in Prodigy’s lab. In this week’s episode, “Emergence,” co-written by Hawley and Maria Melnik and directed by Dana Gonzales, we see the consequences of Slightly’s actions firsthand, as Prodigy scientist Arthur Sylvia (David Rysdahl) becomes Alien: Earth‘s first chestburster victim, but it’s anyone’s guess whether other characters will live to see another day on Neverland.

Ahead of Episode 7’s premiere, Collider had the opportunity to speak with Gourav about his character’s biggest moments this week, as well as how he worked with co-star Jonathan Ajayi both on and offscreen to build Slightly and Smee’s friendship. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, Gourav discusses the backstory he created for his character, how the chestburster scene’s practical effects made it easy for him to deliver a genuine reaction, why Slightly is drawn to Morrow even after everything they’ve been through, the tricky experience of filming in a real lagoon in Thailand, and more.

COLLIDER: Slightly is going through a lot on this show, as this week’s episode indicates. In terms of preparing for this role, though, how did you tap into your own inner child to play him?

ADARSH GOURAV: Yeah, a lot of that was just centered around, as you said, like just getting back in touch with your inner child. There was a lot of reflecting on that, reflecting on my older memories, making notes of who my best friends were between the ages of 8 to 12, what my dynamic was with my parents, the kind of things that I wanted to do at that age, things that I liked doing, things that I didn’t like doing, etc. A lot of talking to my younger cousins, going to the park with my mom and watching other kids play and watching their bodies move with this abandon. That’s the essential difference between an adult body and a child’s body — how much we clench as adults and the tension that we hold in our bodies, versus a child who hasn’t really felt the sense of responsibility in life.

Before we started shooting, we had a bunch of sessions with a child psychologist in Bangkok, which I personally found extremely helpful. We did a few group sessions together where we painted a bunch, made some nice sculptures with clay, did different kinds of activities, actually. There was this one time when all of us sat and ate a bag of crickets and different kinds of things that you find on the streets of Bangkok, fried crickets and fried cockroaches and God knows what. And I’m a vegetarian, but I was just like, “Fuck it. Let me just go for it,” so I was munching on a bag of crickets! There was this other time when all our younger versions had come over to the child psychologist’s office, so we were just imitating each other. They were imitating us, and we were imitating them. It was a lot of fun.

Talking about best friends, one of my favorite dynamics in this show is Slightly and Smee. It looks like you and Jonathan [Ajayi] are having so much fun getting to play these roles. Smee is constantly trying to find Slightly and just hang out, but in this episode, he stumbles upon Slightly trying to hide the evidence of poor Arthur’s body. How did you and Jonathan really try to develop that on-screen friendship and how it evolves as it’s being tested, especially with the stakes getting higher?

GOURAV: Jonathan and I instantly bonded the day we met. What’s funny is there’s not a lot of things in common between him and me. We’ve had very different upbringings, and we’ve grown up in different countries. The kind of pop culture that we’ve consumed has been very different. But there was still this instantaneous comfort that you feel with certain people. There was this banter and jokes and sharing stories of each other’s childhoods and where our families come from. That just makes it so much easier, when you have that level of comfort and trust with your co-actor. We were hanging out a lot, even off-set. We would read scenes out when we were at the hotel, when we were not filming, and give each other feedback and kind of discover things, even off-camera. So I think all of that came together, and what you see on screen is basically a culmination of all of that.

Adarsh Gourav Explains Slightly’s Breath of Relief in ‘Alien: Earth’ Episode 7

“Thank God, there’s at least somebody else who knows about this…”

When Slightly and Smee are basically trying to sneak out of the compound with Arthur, they run into Kirsh, and at first, you think he’s going to stop them, but then he points them in the right direction. Slightly confesses to everything, and Kirsh reveals he already knows what’s been going on, and you play it as this release-valve moment — because Slightly has been holding that secret inside of him for so long, so it’s a relief that someone else has been aware of it this whole time.

GOURAV: It’s exactly what you said — especially children, right? They’re such bad liars when they know about something. They just really want to go out and share that with at least the people that they’re close to, and it actually manifests itself physically. I remember when I was a child, I was so bad at keeping secrets. If somebody would tell me, “Do not say this to anybody,” I would legit get stomach pains if I wouldn’t be able to share it with anybody. My stomach would start cramping. So I remembered that while I was doing the scene, and I felt this knot in my stomach, constantly, because I was trying to hide shit and not let other people know.

When Kirsh is finally like, “I know what you’ve been up to,” and “Just take the elevator,” the physical release of that was what made my shoulders drop. Thank God, there’s at least somebody else who knows about this, and they’re an adult, and they don’t seem too angry about it.

When I spoke with David [Rysdahl] about this episode, he mentioned the hand-holding scene when the three of you get to the beach, which wasn’t originally in the script. How did you all find that moment of surprising intimacy and fatherly affection, especially right before what happens next?

GOURAV: A lot of it was just listening to each other and to our bodies. For Slightly, I feel like he’s always at least… in the backstory that I had cooked for him, his father went to jail back home. So he grew up with a single mom, missing out on a father figure, and once he comes to Neverland, he’s constantly looking for somebody to replace his father with. Initially, it’s Morrow, and then when he realizes that Morrow is not the nice guy that he thought he was, then it becomes Arthur. But there’s always that search to replace that vacuum that he has in his life — and I think we, me and Slightly, both of us, found that with David. He’s also such a gentle guy. It’s hard not to trust him and be in love with him.

‘Alien: Earth’s Adarsh Gourav Bought Into the Reality of Episode 7’s Chestburster Scene

“You know that you’re acting, but a lot of it is also genuinely fooling your mind…”

Image via FX

Right after that, the chestburster emerges, which is such an iconic image from the original movie. What the show does really well is sort of play on our expectations. As fans, we know what happens when a facehugger latches onto someone. From the perspective of someone who’s in that scene, how did you want to play your reaction as naturally as possible? Were there real effects for you to really react to?

GOURAV: The moment leading up to that, as you said, was when Arthur comes up to us, and he’s like, “You guys don’t have to do this. You can tell me, and I’ll help you.” It was also the first time an adult in that entire zone had actually offered to help us — barring Dame Sylvia, who Slightly doesn’t have a strong relationship with. Arthur is the first adult who’s like, “Guys, if there’s something wrong with you, I promise to protect you,” and I feel like Slightly was just dying to hear that from anybody. He was dying to be protected. He was dying to feel like a child again and for somebody to just hold his hand and to tell him that it’s going to be okay. David just did that so beautifully, with so much honesty, that it was a very instantaneous moment of us holding hands and then walking.

When the chestbuster happens, because you’ve now elevated your expectation and tied yourself much more to the character, the shock and the horror of it also feels that much more real. There were practical effects. There was an animatronic body that was there, and you saw the hole, the cavity in the stomach, and the blood pouring out. You know that you’re acting, but a lot of it is also genuinely fooling your mind that “This is my reality right now.” I feel like Jonathan and myself both bought into that reality at that moment in time. We saw blood squirting out everywhere, and we were really freaking out, and there was blood all over our faces.

The scene in this episode that has stuck with me ever since I saw it for the first time is when Slightly and Smee have to drag Arthur’s body through the lagoon to the beach, and they run into Morrow and the Weyland-Yutani soldiers, and you just play that “I tried” moment with so much defeat and sadness and numbness, in a way. What was the experience like of filming that moment — not just because you’re standing in waist-deep water, but also the defeat Slightly is experiencing after everything went wrong?

GOURAV: It was just the frustration of not being able to do something. From my backstory, the relationship that Slightly had established with his dad was with someone who always wanted his son to be of a certain kind, and he was never able to live up to that expectation. With Morrow, initially, when Slightly trusts him, when he’s being nice to him, and he feels like he’s found a replacement for his father — and then even when Slightly discovers that Morrow’s not the guy he thought he was, he still wants to make him happy in some way. It’s really fucked up. But the way he’s groomed Slightly, it’s how it made him feel, and he didn’t want to disappoint Morrow. Part of that frustration came from the fact that he couldn’t save his family, and part of it came from the fact that he failed in what was expected of him.

Not to mention the place where we were shooting — it was this insane place, middle of nowhere, a bunch of these small islands where the water is at your ankles in the morning, and as the day progresses, the water level keeps rising. We went there at around 9:30 or 10 in the morning, and the water was at our ankles. By the time we wrapped, and we were exiting the island, which was about 5 PM, the water was at our necks. It was crazy.