While breaking down her career timeline, Sigourney Weaver reflected on 1999’s satirical sci-fi comedy Galaxy Quest and how she wishes the cult favorite had stuck to its initial R-rated guns (or, rather, space lasers).
In a video interview with Vanity Fair, the Alien star said she related more to her character Gwen, a has-been actress who resented her objectification in the movie’s bygone space soap opera series, than the steely Ripley in the 1979 Ridley Scott classic.
“I wanted to play a young woman in that world of stardom, who wants so much to be a star and who, because she’s beautiful and bosomy and blonde, no one takes very seriously — not even the commander. And I felt great compassion and sisterhood with Gwen and Tawny [the fictional character she plays in the world of Galaxy Quest].”
Adding that she was “fortunate” to have worked with an “amazing group” of co-stars including Tim Allen, Tony Shalhoub and Alan Rickman, the Avatar actress said, “I wish they put out a director’s cut of the movie because, at the last minute, DreamWorks decided to release the movie with some of the more sophisticated scenes cut that Alan was in because it needed a kids’ movie to go up against [Columbia Pictures’] Stuart Little. And why they don’t put out the movie again with more of his very, very strange and wonderful scenes?”
Of the long-discussed sequel that never came to pass, Weaver said, “[Co-writer] Bob Gordon had written a second one, and he wouldn’t give it to DreamWorks because he just felt they’d missed the boat on ours. And so we always meant to do a sequel, and then with Alan passing away, we just lost heart. But it was a great privilege to do this love letter to actors.”
Directed by Dean Parisot, the parody and loving homage to series like Star Trek centers on a group of alumni of a space TV show who are unwittingly drawn into an intergalactic conflict by aliens who believe their imaginary series to be a depiction of real life.
Though sequel discussions have circulated prior to and following Rickman’s death as a result of pancreatic cancer in 2016, potential follow-ups have since stalled. However, OG film producer Mark Johnson told Deadline earlier this year that a Galaxy Quest TV series is currently being written for CBS Studios.
