Alan Tudyk was almost 50 when he scored his first starring function in a TV collection because the titular extraterrestrial Harry Vanderspeigle in Syfy’s “Resident Alien.” It’s not that he was underemployed or little recognized — he’s been celebrated in style circles since “Firefly,” the 2002 single-season western-themed house opera wherein he performed the candy, comical pilot of a spaceship captained by smuggler Mal, performed by Nathan Fillion, with whom he has since been linked within the public thoughts, like Hope and Crosby, or Fey and Poehler. His personal 2015 net collection “Con Man” (presently out there on Prime Video), primarily based on his experiences at sci-fi conventions, wherein he and Fillion play inverted variations of themselves, was funded by an enormously profitable crowd-sourced marketing campaign, which raised $3,156,178 from 46,992 backers; clearly the individuals love him.

You possibly can’t precisely name “Resident Alien” career-making, given how a lot Tudyk has labored, going again to onscreen roles within the late twentieth century and on stage in New York, however it has made him particularly seen over a protracted interval in a wonderful present in an element for which he appears to have been usual. He has, certainly, usually been invisible, with a parallel profession as a voice artist, starting with small components in “Ice Age” in 2002; since channeling Ed Wynn for King Sweet in Disney’s 2012 “Wreck-It Ralph” (which received him an Annie Award), the studio has used him often, like an excellent luck appeal. You possibly can hear him in “Frozen” (Duke of Weselton), “Big Hero 6” (Alistair Krei), “Zootopia” (Duke Weaselton), “Moana” (Hei Hei), “Encanto” (Pico) and “Wish” (Valentino). He performed the Joker on “Harley Quinn” and voices Optimus Prime in “Transformers: EarthSpark.” Performing movement seize and voice-over, he was Sonny the emotional android in “I, Robot” and the dry droid Okay-2SO in each “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” and once more in “Andor.” (He’s a robotic once more within the new “Superman” movie.) It is a partial, one may even say fractional, listing. Amongst animation and sci-fi followers, being the well-informed types they’re, Tudyk is understood and honored for this physique of labor as nicely.

Alan Tudyk at his house in Los Angeles final yr. The actor has been in quite a lot of roles onscreen, on stage and as a voice actor.

(Ethan Benavidez / For The Occasions)

“Resident Alien,” whose fourth season is underway on Syfy, USA and Peacock (earlier seasons can be found on Netflix, which has raised the present’s profile significantly), is a small city comedy with apocalyptic overtones. It sees Tudyk’s alien, whose pure type is of a large, big-eyed, noseless humanoid with octopus DNA, imperfectly disguised as the brand new native physician, whom he kills within the first episode. (We are going to be taught that the physician was, in truth, an murderer, which makes it form of … all proper?) Studying English from reruns of “Law & Order,” the being now known as Harry will preposterously achieve his masquerade, and in doing so, be a part of a group that may in the end enhance him. (By native requirements, at the very least.) It’s a fish method, method out of water story, with the distinction that the fish has been despatched to kill all of the Earth fish — I’m being metaphorical, he isn’t truly out to kill fish — though he’s now working to save lots of them from a distinct, nastier race of alien.

Some actors play their first half and all of the sudden their title is in all places; others slide into public consciousness slowly, by way of a aspect door — which can lead, in any case, to an extended, extra assorted profession. Tudyk has the standard of getting arrived, regardless of having been there all alongside. Like many actors with a protracted CV, he may shock you, turning up on outdated episodes of “Strangers With Candy,” “Frasier,” “Arrested Development” or “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” or repeatedly crying “Cramped!” in a scene from “Patch Adams,” or within the films “Wonder Boys,” “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Tale” or “3:10 to Yuma.” You may say to your self, or the particular person you’re watching with, “Hey, that’s Alan Tudyk.” (You may add, “He hasn’t aged a bit.”) It was “Suburgatory,” an underloved ABC sitcom from 2011, although not underloved by me, the place he performed the confused greatest buddy of star Jeremy Sisto, that, mixed with “Firefly,” cemented Tudyk in my thoughts as somebody I’d at all times be comfortable to see.

He’s good-looking in a pleasing, strange method. If he’s not precisely Hollywood’s thought of a number one man, it solely factors up the restrictions of that idea. His eyes are perhaps a trifle shut set, his lips a little bit skinny. There’s a softness to him that feeds into or productively contrasts together with his characters, relying on the place they fall on the good-bad or calm-hysterical scales. (Within the present season of “Resident Alien,” a shape-shifting big praying mantis has taken over Harry’s human identification, and this evil twin efficiency, which by some means fools Harry’s mates, is as horrifying as the truth that the mantis eats individuals’s heads.) It makes his robots relatable and roots his extra flamboyant characters, like Mr. Nowhere, the villain within the first season of “Doom Patrol” — who feedback on the collection from exterior the fourth wall, inhabiting a white void the place he is likely to be found sitting on a rest room and studying a assessment of the present he’s in — in one thing like naturalism.

Sara Tomko and Alan Tudyk in a scene from Season 4 of “Resident Alien.”

(USA Community / James Dittiger / USA Community)

As Harry, Tudyk is rarely actually calm. Relaxed neither in voice nor physique, he tucks his lips inside his mouth and stretches it into quite a lot of blobby shapes. The actor can appear to be puppeteering his personal expressions, which, in a method Harry is, or splitting the distinction between an actual particular person and an animated cartoon, within the Chuck Jones/Tex Avery sense of the time period, which isn’t to say Tudyk overplays; he simply hits the proper notice of exaggeration. Harry usually has the air of being impatient to go away a scene and get on with no matter enterprise he’s determined is necessary.

Although he’s given to explosive bursts of speech, because the character has developed, the humor he performs turns into extra delicate and quiet, peppered with muttered feedback and sotto voce asides he means to be heard. He’s, as he likes to level out, the neatest and strongest being round, however he has the emotional maturity of a kid. At one level, having misplaced his alien powers, Harry was prepared to sacrifice everything of his species to get them again.

The place as soon as he had no feelings, now he is filled with them. Final season, he was given a romance, with Heather (Edi Patterson), a chook particular person from outer house, which has continued into the present run; he’s additionally a father, with an amazing affection — anomalous in his species — for his son, Bridget, an adorably fearsome little inexperienced creature. And he loves pie.

And that Tudyk himself appears genuinely good — there are interviews with him up and down YouTube, and my buddy David, who labored on “Firefly,” known as him “kind, grateful and curious” — makes him simple to love, nonetheless likable an individual he’s taking part in. That probably shouldn’t matter when assessing an actor’s artwork, however it does anyway.