25 Things You Didn't Know About Alien

25. Yaphet Kotto Was Instructed To Annoy Sigourney Weaver On Set

It's common knowledge that a lot of moments in Alien, such as the infamous chestburster scene, were reliant on improvisation and certain production details being withheld from the cast to give the film a sense of authenticity. However beyond the big moments, a lot of subtleties went on behind the scenes as well.

One such example is the relationship between Sigourney Weaver and Yaphet Kotto, who played The Nostromo's prickly chief engineer Dennis Parker. It was a convincing dynamic, and there's good reason for it.

Kotto was instructed by Ridley Scott to deliberately annoy Weaver off-camera in order to add to the tension between their characters. It was evidently effective, as Ripley and Parker show a very believable onscreen enmity.