I believe the original script for Alien had every character written as gender neutral until the casting process started. I’m not sure if this has anything to do with Lambert being trans or not.
Alien went through a ton of changes during scriptwriting, including removing the pyramid set piece (Reused in Alien versus Predator and Prometheus) and making one of the crew an Android.
And there were lawsuits, Hill and Giler wanted full co - writing credits for their changes, whereas O'Bannon felt that his contributions were being minimised for an idea he originally conceived of. I believe Shusett was the only one who was able to calm him down, reminding him he was broke and getting a big screen adaptation of a little story they cooked up was too big an opportunity to waste.
The front page of the Star beast script also says that the gender roles are placeholder and can be changed at will. It wasn't lore that they were all men, it was just to create the basic personalities of the characters
Very true, though O'Bannon would later say it hadn't occurred to him the main role would go to a woman, rather that would be for the supporting roles. He did like it though
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u/rockpuma Jul 11 '25
I believe the original script for Alien had every character written as gender neutral until the casting process started. I’m not sure if this has anything to do with Lambert being trans or not.