“There’s something about Justin where she needs a miracle, needs to witness a miracle in order to resurrect that kind of joy in life,” Ejiofor says. “And I think there’s something that I think we’ve kind of been going through collectively over the last few years. A kind of draining of our energies and a kind of needing to recharge, to fall in love with our experience.

“For Justin, part of that happens in the form of Faraday, from this miraculous thing that happens,” adds Ejiofor. “But I guess as a species we can sometimes fall short of understanding or appreciating the miracles that surround us. The kind of profound miracles that surround us every day.

It’s surprisingly empowering, Ejiofor says, to have a stranger re-articulate that for Justin, “and for us, maybe, if we engage with the show in that way. It’s kind of a special feeling. It was definitely for me to play it in. It made me re-appreciate or re-engage with a sense of wonder towards our planet.

“Faraday comes from a dying planet, and I had forgotten or dismissed how much everything I have, and everything I love and everything I’m connected to, and all the joys that I can feel, are also tied to being part of a habitat, a literal planet, that allows me to do that,” Ejiofor explains.

The idea that the film and the TV series – so far apart in terms of timing – both make social commentary on contemporary life suggests that the issues that challenged us in 1976 are not so far removed from the issues that challenge us in 2022. That doesn’t make the series a polemic, says Ejiofor, but it does mean that art and politics intersect in it.

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“If art is entirely without politics, then I think it’s hard to find its meaning,” he says. “But I don’t necessarily think it’s controversial in the sense that it’s controversial in a way. Sometimes truth is political and art should strive to articulate what is truthful in the most resourceful way possible, and I think that’s what it strives to do.

“When it works, when art works best, is when it’s almost indisputable, when things are presented in their most truthful form,” Ejiofor says. “And so what you can do then is reflect on the kind of realities of things and discuss them. And maybe it leads to disagreements or conversations, but the real essential nature of it doesn’t force anything on you.

Instead, he says, the show finally expresses something that you know on some level is true. “One of the things about this show and this kind of conversation for Faraday, which I think is true for us, no matter what side of the debate you are on, is that we hold our planet entirely for granted.

“Whether you think we should or not…I think that aspect is true and everyone recognizes it as truth,” he says. “Seeing an alien come from a planet that has all this destruction and what kind of conflict it brings up in that alien, I think there’s a drama there. There’s something appealing about it.

He also adds that the way Bowie still dominates the new series is important. “He’s just larger than life, larger than life’s kind of experience in a way, and brought such richness and joy and charisma and playfulness to the experience for all of us,” Ejiofor says. “He influenced all of our culture and our arts and our fashion and our sense of the world and our music, obviously. And I think that sits at the heart of a piece like this in a very deep and layered way.

“We all felt that we were kind of led there through the kind of goal of David Bowie and the kind of iconic status he gave Altheans, not just through the performance he gave in the movie, but how he extended it through his own slightly alien personality in general,” he adds. “And a lot of the kind of music, obviously, that relates to space and that kind of searching and that kind of cerebral and emotional connection with the stars and the universe and all of our kind of ability, our ability shimmering inside that.”

Bill Nighy is living, breathing proof of the axiom that it takes a legend to play a legend, says Ejiofor. “Bill is exactly that; he has extraordinary abilities as an actor but also shines as a human being. All the… good things. And I’ve known him for about 20 years and it’s been such an utter joy in my life. I got to hang out with Bill and work with him a few times and he has all the richness you could want in that part.

The man who fell to earth is on Showtime.