Resident Alien’s Sara Tomko on Asta’s Dating Life and That Whole Joseph Mess: ‘She Still Has a Lot of Shame’

Nick Caruso
·4 min read
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Asta’s well aware of Harry’s manipulative plot to set her up with an evil alien hybrid, but she still can’t help but feel unlucky in love. (Harry was trying to sneakily gain intel about the Greys’ plan to destroy Earth, but still. Not cool, man.)

On Wednesday’s episode of Resident Alien, Asta decides to actively help Harry retrieve info from Joseph, even after feeling depressed that her first venture back in the dating world was completely fabricated. She agrees to see Joseph again despite the danger involved, but once the Grey catches Harry and D’Arcy in a trap set at his apartment, the jig is up. Luckily, the self-appointed new alien tracker Max is able to save Harry and D’Arcy, while Dan and a well-hidden syringe full of drugs are able to help Asta dispose of Joseph.

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Though Joseph was never going to be “the one” for her — hell, he’s not even a viable, real, human option — Asta is still left feeling a sense of whiplash over the entire ordeal.

“Asta has an initial attraction to Joseph, but when she has a little diner scene with her girls, D’Arcy and Kayla, she explains that it still feels really fresh coming off of this divorce,” Sara Tomko tells TVLine. “In Season 1, we really got to experience how Asta is weirded out by actually trusting another man. It just so happens he’s an alien and she’s like, ‘Of course, that is the one time I trust [someone]!'”

But in terms of human men, Tomko says her character still has “a lot of shame about her divorce.”

“There’s a part of her that feels unlovable and she doesn’t know how to deal with that uncomfortable feeling and doesn’t feel worthy,” she says. “And even though she’s getting better in Season 3 and she’s learning how to become who she is and stand up for what she wants, I think it’s just awkward. She’s just like, ‘I don’t know, you’re so cute, but who am I?’ I think that’s just a very true, relatable feeling that sometimes we have when we feel less than. So, of course, finding out what she finds out is once again like hitting her head.”

Adds D’Arcy’s portrayer Alice Wetterlund: “And her blaming herself is such a woman move, to be like, ‘It’s my fault you’re an alien!'” [Laughs]

While Harry may not have scrounged exactly what he wanted out of Joseph, the episode served as a vehicle to pair Harry up with a different Patience resident: D’Arcy. As Wetterlund (who’s a die-hard sci-fi fan and a Trekker with her own Star Trek podcast) tells us, having D’Arcy become more a part of the show’s main storyline was “what I’ve always wanted.” Since her character now knows the truth about Harry’s alien ways, it opens D’Arcy up to a whole new world of antics.

“I needed to play a part in that storyline and I’m so excited,” Wetterlund says. “Just to be able to play in scenes alongside Sara, Alan [Tudyk] and Enver [Gjokaj] and watch D’Arcy go from like, ‘Oh my God, there are aliens!’ to where she ends up is very, very fun to play.”

She adds: “It was a new experience for all. The show experiments with, ‘What does it look like when D’Arcy is in Asta’s place as the duo to Harry?’ It’s [always] just Harry and Asta, so what does it look like when it’s Harry and D’Arcy? It’s so different and so dysfunctional.”

With the dust having semi-settled with Joseph (at least for now), Harry makes a surprising discovery by episode’s end: that Mayor Ben has been repeatedly abducted by the Greys ever since he was a kid. After hypnotizing poor Ben, Harry finally finds what feels like his first major clue tucked deep inside the mayor’s repressed memory: A snow globe pointing Harry to Yellowstone National Park. Could the key to the Greys’ plan be hidden there?

What did you think about the season’s second episode? Will the Hawthorne family play a key role in the ongoing melee with the Greys? Drop some comments below with your thoughts!

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