How the series "Alf" was filmed: footage from filming and 12 interesting facts about the series (15 photos)

The series "Alf" about a funny but arrogant alien who ends up in an ordinary family left a warm nostalgic trace in the souls of millions of viewers.





1. The creator of Alpha is puppeteer Paul Fusco, who once worked on creating television shows using puppets, and also personally created these same dolls. There was practically no free space in his house, as it was occupied by the creations he created.



One day, Paul made a strange-looking doll that looked like a furry anteater (essentially a prototype of Alpha), walking on two legs. Using his creation, he continually played pranks on his family members, which annoyed them greatly.

But Paul Fusco himself, meanwhile, was fired up with the idea of creating his own show about his new character. He began to attend various parties in Los Angeles, and one day, by the will of fate, he met with the head of the NBC television channel, Brandon Tartikoff.





Initially, Tartikoff was rather cool about this idea, but after a while he himself talked to the doll and even asked her why he should give her his show. Without being taken aback, Paul Fusco told Tartikoff in the voice of Alf that he had nothing but garbage on his channel, and that the series “Alf” would save his channel from collapse. As a result, Tartikoff liked Paul Fusco so much with his puppet and the character's manner of speech that he gave the green light to create a series, which was called "Alf".



2. Many people do not understand why the series is called Alf, and why the Tanner family calls it that way, despite the fact that the alien’s name is Gordon Shumway (by the way, a completely earthly name).

But apparently these people simply didn’t watch the very first episode, when the main character came to the Tanners. That’s what the father of the family, Willie, called him when he first saw him, since ALF stands for Alien Life Form, that is, “Alien Life Form.”



3. According to the plan, the Tanners were supposed to have two children - the eldest daughter Lyn and the youngest son Brian. But when actress Anne Shadin, who played the mother of Kate's family, became pregnant, the creators decided not to hide her pregnancy, but to film it as it was. And when Anne gave birth, a new family member was introduced into the series - a newborn child.



Approximately the same technique was used in the series “Happy Together” when actress Natalya Bochkareva, who played Dasha Bukin, became pregnant. Then the creators decided to make Dasha Bukina herself pregnant. But unlike the series "Alf", the newborn baby never appeared in the series. Moreover, his absence was not explained in any way.

4. Alf was presented in the series in two versions. In the first version, we were shown it only from the waist up. Then Alf was controlled by a puppeteer who moved around the room using a specially made trench in the floor, so the actors had to be careful not to fall into these holes themselves, which were located throughout the studio. But one day, Anne Schedeen, who played Kate, fell into a hole. Fortunately, there were no consequences.



But in some moments Alf was shown in full growth. In this case, the American midget actor Mihai Messaros wore the Alpha costume. His height was only 84 centimeters. The actor died in 2016 at the age of 76.



5. The creator of the series and the Alpha doll itself, Paul Fusco, personally controlled his creation and personally voiced this character. But he didn't do it alone. Paul himself controlled only Alf's left hand and his head, while his assistant Lisa was responsible for his right hand. In addition, they were helped by Lisa’s husband named Bob, who remotely controlled the alien’s eyebrows.



But due to the fact that Paul and Lisa constantly had to keep their arms raised, they became very numb, which is why a massage therapist was invited to the set.

But 2 puppeteers are not that much. For example, to move the Crypt Keeper doll from the serieshorror film "Tales from the Crypt", as many as 6 people were involved.

6. Max Wright, who played Willie Tanner, literally hated his role. He was the most difficult actor out of the entire crew. The fact that he was constantly the initiator of various conflicts was simply the stuff of legends. But the most interesting thing is that after the last take was filmed, he simply silently stood up and left the set, without even saying goodbye to anyone.



7. It was planned that the series "Alf" would consist of five seasons. The fourth season ended with an open ending, when Alpha was surrounded by the military and taken to their base. But in the end, the series was never renewed. As Paul Fusco said, the reason was that NBC did not want to bet on a third-party project, since the Alf series itself did not belong to them (they only had the rights to the premiere and reruns, but not to the series itself and the characters) .



Then they decided to rely on their own TV shows, one of which was the series “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” with the young rapper Will Smith in the title role.

But as Paul Fusco would later say, after a long time, Brandon Tartikoff approached him and said that he had made a big mistake by not renewing the series for a fifth, and possibly a sixth, season.

Paul Fusco began to look for different opportunities to somehow end the series. It wasn't until 1996 that ABC gave Paul Fusco a helping hand. True, we were no longer talking about a full season, but only about a television film. But this was enough for Paul Fusco to logically complete the alien’s story.



As a result, the film was called "Project Alpha", but none of the original cast appeared in the film, except for Paul Fusco himself, who still controlled the puppet and voiced the main character. True, few people liked the film itself.

8. Due to the fact that the Alpha doll wore out very quickly, a separate stand-in doll was created for rehearsals so as not to fray the original doll. The doll-understudy even got its own name - Ralph (RALF), which can be translated as “Rehearsal Extraterrestrial Life Form” or simply “Rehearsal ALF”.

9. The actors and other members of the crew were forbidden to touch Alf so as not to spoil his fur, because before each filming it took a considerable amount of time to comb the alien.



10. In 2018, the Warner Brothers studio expressed a desire to film a continuation (restart) of the series, where Alf would return to Earth again, but would end up with a new family. True, to this day nothing is known about the filming of the new sitcom.



11. The management of the NBC television channel decided that in the second season Alf simply needed a new friend, for example a tame monkey. But Paul Fusco flatly refused this idea.

12. Back in the third and fourth seasons, the animated series “Alf” was released, which told about Gordon’s life on his home planet Malmak. But this series differed sharply from the concept of the series and was intended exclusively for a children's audience.