Posted: July 5th, 2025 / 03:23 PM

is now in its fourth season on USA and Syfy Friday nights, with episodes thereafter streaming on Peacock.

The extraterrestrial who has assumed the identity of Dr. Harry Vanderspiegle (Alan Tudyk) is currently stuck in human form, which is making him extremely unhappy.

However, law enforcement in Harry’s small town of Patience, Colorado, is feeling pretty excited about recent developments. Sheriff Mike, played by Corey Reynolds, and Deputy Liv, portrayed by Elizabeth Bowen, have both recently gotten confirmation that there are aliens around (although they still don’t know about Harry). For Liv, who has always believed, this is a relief; for Mike, a lifelong skeptic, it’s a major shift.

Bowen is Canadian. She counts her role on Season 2 of as State Trooper Sue Lutz as a major career boost. Bowen’s other credits include the films , , , and , and regular or recurring roles on series including , , , and .

Sheriff Mike is far from Reynolds’s first stint as someone with a badge, he points out. “I played a cop on a show called for seven years [for which he earned three SAG Award nominations], and I played a district attorney on another show called , and I played a U.S. Customs Border Patrol officer in .”

Originally from Richmond, Virginia, Reynolds has feature credits that include and . He also has a background in stage and appeared in the Broadway musical version of .

Bowen and Reynolds join separately on the same Zoom call to discuss Season 4. A few days later, Reynolds answers some follow-up questions at a premiere event for the season at the West Hollywood London Hotel.

Were either or both of them concerned about whether would get a fourth season before they got the pick-up announcement?

“In this business, you hope you can be confident, but I wasn’t sure,” says Bowen. “In past seasons – as Season 1 was still airing, we already knew that we were getting picked up for Season 2. So, this time, Season 3 aired, and we didn’t hear anything for two-and-a-half months after we finished airing. So, I wasn’t feeling as confident as I have other years.”

Reynolds agrees and elaborates, “And COVID has had a strange impact on the industry – that and the two industry strikes [the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild] as well. I’d be curious to know how many shows that premiered during COVID are still on the air. We’re one of a handful that premiered during that time that are still here.” The way that television is filmed now, where you do maybe eight episodes, and then you might ave a year or two between seasons, is insane to me personally.”

“Yes,” Bowen concurs.

“From a business standpoint,” Reynolds continues, “that’s crazy, where there are so many things that happen so fast, to have that amount of time in between seasons is a lot. But I can’t complain.

“I was never worried about Season 4. I’m not convinced that we’re done now. We’ll see. I think that the way that the story unfolds here gives us a path that, should Season 4 be the end, I think it’s a journey that we’re all proud of, and it [wraps up] the way that we would see it as being acceptable. But for me personally, there’s certainly a path to continuing this storytelling. I think in the town of Patience. the ground for storytelling is actually now more fertile than it was before. So, who knows?”

Within the storytelling, the characters are going through some changes. What does knowing that aliens are among them do for Sheriff Mike and Deputy Liv?

“My character has always been open-minded and believes in all sorts of things that people didn’t believe in,” Bowen responds, “even believing in people that didn’t deserve to be believed in. Like [Liv’s] Nana – she was [vicious]. Liv was always kind and open-minded, no matter what happened. That wasn’t challenging for me or how I saw my character. I think it was just an extension and expansion of who she’s always been and where she’s always hoped to go.”

For Sheriff Mike, Reynolds says, “I think him being made aware of the alien presence in Patience has most definitely changed what he perceives and how he’s operating. I think it has opened his eyes in ways that much of what he came to believe in life, he’s had to reevaluate and reassess. And that’s difficult to do when you’ve spent a lifetime understanding and knowing and believing one thing, to have it change so quickly – well, not quickly in the sense of, Deputy Liv’s been telling him for a long time now, but changing so quickly in the sense of his acceptance of this new truth. So, yeah, I think it’s taken the blinders off the world for him a little bit.”

This doesn’t much affect Reynolds’s approach to the character. “I don’t know that having full knowledge of everything really impacts my performance, unless that’s what’s on the page, for me to be impacted by that. I think it’s a great piece of information that completes the puzzle for Sheriff Mike, but as far as what impact it has on how I perform the character, very little.”

Something that does impact Sheriff Mike’s scenes these days is that he’s trying to learn how to concede that he’s not always right. “I just try to be as rooted in what feels real as possible. Sometimes, in reality, it’s easy to apologize. Sometimes it’s really hard. I think Mike is trying to make an effort to not see an apology as a deficiency on his behalf.

“I think sometimes people are afraid to apologize because it feels like they’re admitting some sort of fault. If you’re saying you’re sorry, you have to be sorry for something, so what are you sorry for, what did you do? So, Mike’s had a hard time with that, but now that he’s comfortable and feels like he has earned his place in the town, I feel like he’s got a different take on it.”

Given his resume of playing officials, Reynolds says he hasn’t to learn much about police work in order to play Sheriff Mike. If he has any questions, “My brother-in-law, my former brother-in-law, former father-in-law, they were also police officers. So, I kind of just run to my circle, I guess.”

Does Reynolds have any idea why he keeps getting cast in these roles? “I don’t know. It’s something about maybe how I present myself, it just comes across as cop-ish – hopefully in a good way. I don’t want to be cast as a cop because people think I’m a dick, you know what I mean?” he laughs. “I hope that’s not it. I think it’s because I just have an authoritative personality.”

Bowen, and consequently Deputy Liv, have visibly lost weight between seasons, so much so that it was written into the script as a plot point regarding Liv’s work uniform.

Bowen explains, “I reached out to Chris [Sheridan], our showrunner, our boss, our friend, last summer, because we hadn’t seen each other in over a year since Season 3 finished [shooting], and said, ‘Hey, I don’t know if you knew this, FYI, I’ve lost quite a bit of weight, and I think it’s noticeable and just wanted to let you know, and if you want to write that in and address it, I’m fine either way.’ So, he and I had a discussion about how we might go about doing that. I think we both just wanted to make sure it was in a way that was not offensive to anyone who may struggle with their weight, but also in a way that wasn’t offensive to me or to my character.”

Does Bowen have input into the costumes Liv wears when she’s not on duty?

“Definitely. Whenever we have a fitting, the costume department will have a rack of clothes for you, and they will say, ‘These are some looks we were thinking for this scene when you’re in the bar, or this scene when you’re getting in your car.’ It’s a completely collaborative effort.”

The actors are free to say “no” to costume choices they don’t like, Bowen adds. “They want you to feel good. And we were really on the same page. We worked with costume designer Kelsey Chobotar this year. It’s been great every season, but we definitely have a say in what we feel best in, or what we feel our character might be wearing, or maybe try something new. We’re very lucky that way.”

And do Bowen and Reynolds most want people to know about Season 4?

“Everything takes off in Season 4,” Reynolds relates. “All of the investments and seeds that have been planted during the run of the show, all of them are colliding and paying off.”

“Yes, I agree,” Bowen nods. “It’s a big season, it’s a very satisfying season, and I think people are really going to enjoy it. It’s a real roller-coaster.”

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Article: Exclusive Interview with RESIDENT ALIEN actors Elizabeth Bowen and Corey Reynolds on Season 4