Posted: July 14th, 2025 / 05:44 PM

In Season 4 of , airing Fridays on USA and Syfy and thereafter available on Peacock, the extraterrestrial title character, played by Alan Tudyk, has found himself stuck in human form of small-town doctor Harry Vanderspiegle.

But Harry is far from the only one in Patience, Colorado with alien problems. While Patience mayor’s wife Kate Hawthorne, played by Meredith Garretson, doesn’t know about Harry, she has finally learned that not only has she been repeatedly abducted by the nefarious Greys, but she has a baby girl that the Greys have kept. Kate’s obsession with rescuing her baby has led to clashes with her husband Ben (Levi Fiehler) and to practically ignore their teen son Max (Judah Prehn).

Garretson is a frequent traveler between Los Angeles and New York City. Some of her other credits include the Paramount+ miniseries , in which she played Ali MacGraw, and the films , , and .

On a Zoom call and a few days later at the Season 4 premiere party at West Hollywood’s London Hotel, Garretson talks about portraying Kate and the season overall.

Did Garretson have concerns about coming back for a fourth season?

Garretson laughs..” Oh, my God. I’ll say that, in this time in our industry, there are no guarantees season to season. I had a sneaking suspicion, because we had an incredibly strong Season 3, that Season 4 was going to come. We ended on so many cliffhangers that I feel like it would have been unkind to do to our fans to not resolve some of these issues. So, I was pretty confident that Season 4 was coming, but every time we get a renewed season, it feels like a gift. And every time we leave a season, we say, ‘Thank you,’ we say, ‘We’re so grateful and we hope we get to do this again.’ So, it’s the greatest job. Every new year feels like a bonus.”

In the finale of Season 3, Asta, played by Sara Tomko, and D’Arcy, portrayed by Alice Wetterlund, had rescued Kate’s baby. D’Arcy brought the baby to Kate and Ben’s door – and then the show ended for the year.

Garretson acknowledges some trepidation about this. “I was like, they left the end of Season 3 with D’Arcy coming to my door, sand I was like, ‘Oh, God. Maybe I start this season [4] and get my baby back, but what happens if she doesn’t get the baby back?’ That cliffhanger for Season 3 was excruciating for me.

“What a gift for an actor, but it’s an agonizing storyline, to know that you have a child out there who you can’t protect, who they’re doing God knows what to, and you literally don’t have the skills to get them back. So, I was definitely worried starting the season, like, ‘Is she going to knock on my door? Is she going to give us our baby back?’ Because there are caveats to that, there are pluses and minuses to my baby being returned to me.”

One big potential minus is that if the baby comes back to Kate and Ben, the Greys will know where the child is and possibly kidnap her all over again. “So, that’s a huge part of my character arc this season, is getting reunited with my baby and having my family being whole again.”

How does Garretson regard Kate being somewhat absent-minded when it comes to son Max?

“I feel like sometimes you get so hyper-focused on something that you can’t see what’s right in front of you. Max has had this whole life that she knows nothing about. He has these powers,” i.e., the ability to see aliens in their true form, “and a relationship with Harry, that she doesn’t know anything about. And this hyper-focus on one child who has been taken from her might mean that she’s missing some things that are right in front of her, and she and Ben will both have to reckon with that this season.”

In her quest to bring her fight to the aliens, Kate takes up various forms of fight training. “I love when Kate gets to fight. I feel like getting to use my body is always super-fun. We have incredible stunt coordinators who, throughout the course of this show, have facilitated and led and guided us through all the physical work that we do.

“At the beginning of Season 4, we see a lot of the boxing and punching. Our stunt coordinators helped me with that. I’m a very physical person, or a gym rat myself, but I’m definitely not a boxer, and so I had a lot of help and guidance as to how to make that look the most realistic. And then also, there’s some cool jumping and diving. I don’t want to give anything away, but all of that had been supervised and guided by our great stunt coordinators. And also, I feel really honored that I’m given physical work to do in the show, because it’s a place where I feel really activated.”

Kate is frequently exasperated with Ben. Does Garretson think Kate really loves him, or is she just so overwhelmed with everything else that she hasn’t considered it for a while?

Garretson is firm in her answer. “I think Kate and Ben are obsessed with each other. I think they are deeply in love, and I think the other person contains qualities that directly challenge the way they see the world and live, and we often choose that. Kate chose Ben for a reason. He had qualities in himself that she did not possess.

“The deal with that, though, is when you’re in conflict in your life, when things are out of alignment, when you feel like Kate feels, ‘I’m in this town, I had a different vision of the way my life was going to go, and I’m here, and it’s all about Ben, and Ben’s the mayor, and it’s his friends and people he grew up with, and what am I doing here, and what’s my purpose?’ She takes that out on Ben. He becomes the point of, ‘This is your fault, and your problem.’

“But I think when the sh*t hits the fan, Ben and Kate show up for each other. They’re there for their family. I think she loves him deeply, and her journey is learning how to love him in the way that works the best for him, and how to accept him for who he is, and not try to change him, and to figure out what it is in herself that she needs to change and where she needs to evolve, so that she stops lashing out at him. Even though, look, he’s messy and he leaves his candles everywhere. He’s so lash-out-able. Who puts things up on the wall that say, ‘Live, laugh, love’? That’s insane behavior. But that being said, you’ve got to meet people where they are.”

Tomko offers, “What I want to see, though, is the credits roll, and he’s showing you his foot kink that Sheriff Mike [Corey Reynolds] would take pictures of, and you being like …”

Garretson supplies Kate’s response. “‘Yeah, this is hot.’”

Both women laugh.

Is there anything, besides fighting, that Garretson would like to see Kate get to do? “Deepening my friendships in Patience, figuring out what those tethers are and how to put roots down and how to feel comfortable in this town and feel like less of an outsider. I’m looking forward to evolutions in her marriage to Ben and the reunion of her complete family, getting her family fully back together.”

What would Garretson most like people to know about Season 4?

“I want people to know about Season 4 that we left Season 3 with a lot of cliffhangers, and I think Season 4 brings a lot of satisfaction, a lot of touching on questions that were posed in the previous seasons and then satisfyingly addressing them. And then I think you can expect to see the world get a lot more complicated for everyone in a way that makes the characters even deeper and more three-dimensional. But then, it will be a satisfying close to our fourth season, and whatever happens after that, I think it’s a really satisfying, meaningful season. It was really meaningful for us all to shoot it.”

Like us on Facebook at ASSIGNMENT X

Article Source: Assignment X
Article: Exclusive Interview with RESIDENT ALIEN actress Meredith Garretson on Season 4