1 of 3 | The third and final season of Alan Tudyk’s “WondLa” premieres Wednesday. Photo courtesy of Apple TV
NEW YORK, Nov. 26 (UPI) — Resident Alien, A Knight’s Tale, Firefly and Frozen icon Alan Tudyk says he loves how his animated Apple TV series, WondLa, is as insightful and inspiring as it is entertaining.
“There are the questions that, as a human man, in 2025, at a half-century, asks himself, ‘What’s it all about?'” Tudyk, 54, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
“I love nature and that’s definitely something that you’re going to find in WondLa — how important nature is and how part of nature we are and I believe that and I love the message this third season of [how] there is no them, it’s just us,” he explained.
“That’s a great idea that the less you can see the separateness of us all, I think you’ve got a good head start on enjoying life. If you could keep that in the forefront.”
The third and final season of the show premieres Wednesday.
The adaptation of Tony DiTerlizzi’s fantasy book follows Eva (Jeanine Mason), a human raised from the time she was a baby in an underground bunker on a planet called Orbona by a robot named Muthr (Teri Hatcher), after an apocalyptic event.
Tudyk plays Cadmus Pryde, the totalitarian lord of the corporation that runs what is left of the universe and hoards all the resources he can for his own community at the expense of others.
“He sees himself as a good leader. He’s doing his best for his species in a time of change and struggle,” Tudyk said.
“He’s trying to anticipate problems and make the best solutions and, unfortunately, he doesn’t always make the best [decisions],” he added. “From his own perspective, he’s doing the best he can all the way to the end.”
The actor said he based Cadmus’ voice, in part, on his “silver fox” appearance with short grey hair, mustache and goatee and a impeccable uniform of muted colors.
“He starts out as a hologram and we sees him talking to children and he’s very much saying, ‘This is what we’re going to do,'” Tudyk noted.
“He is almost like a corporate spokesperson, which is kind of who he is for this way of living. He has to be a politician and the head of the board and [has] that way of presenting and talking to others in a way that sort of smooths out the emotion and that’s been sort of the progression going on with the character,” he added. “The more we get to see him as he is with things going wrong and his choices being more desperate, more of the man and more of the more emotion within gets out.”
The voice cast also includes Brad Garrett, Gary Anthony Williams and John Ratzenberger, but Tudyk sadly didn’t get to work with them because he was working on Resident Alien.
“It was me and the director. We were together. Only us,” Tudyk recalled. “It was also [recorded] over so much time. I was living in Vancouver, mostly during this, so I was away from people. So, it made it difficult.”
The silver lining to being removed from the process, though, is that Tudyk can enjoy the show as an audience member.
“I love it because some of this I recorded a while ago and, so, I’m able to watch it very much as a viewer who’s enjoying it,” Tudyk said. “I’m not in everything, so I’m able to watch everything about it, see how it looks. I think it’s really great. It looks more like a film to me and I’m just impressed by where animation is now that they can do that.”
He is also happy that families can watch the show together.
“It’s big ideas, but it is also a story about a young person,” Tudyk pointed out.
“It’s action and big characters and fun characters that just look like they are built to be plushies,” he added. “But the ideas behind it are big and the things that they’re dealing with are really big, but the story is told in a way that I think everybody can watch it. It isn’t told for shock value. It’s told to make a good point.”
Carol Burnett (L) and Rhea Seehorn attend the world premiere of “Pluribus” at the DGA Theater on November 4, 2025. Photo by Greg Grudt/UPI | License Photo
