Alden Ehrenreich opens up about drawing his own 'Brave New World'-building tattoos

There’s plenty of large-scale world building in Peacock’s bold and beautiful new sci-fi series Brave New World, but star Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story) went straight for the minutiae.   

To play John the Savage, his first TV series regular role, Ehrenreich didn’t just get into character, he got ONTO him as well, by drawing John’s tattoos.

In an upcoming episode of SYFY WIRE's Brave New Pod: The Official Podcast of Brave New World, Ehrenreich tells host Angelique Roche that he’s drawn and painted “forever,” and though time didn’t allow, he wanted to design more of John’s home in the Savage Lands — a voyeuristic vacation spot for the casted elite of New London, a utopian society where everyone is seemingly happy thanks to a steady supply of uppers (soma) and a lack of monogamy, privacy, money, family, or history.

But the Savage Lands allow for a bit of creativity and self-expression. Thus the tattoos.

**SPOILER ALERT: Minor spoilers below for Brave New World!**

“I drew my tattoos in the show,” Ehrenreich says in the podcast. “So I have… this is the first time I’ve talked about this, actually ... but I have a tattoo on my, I guess my like ribcage, in the show, that is like a house. And then I’ve got a tattoo of like a kind of scene of mountains and a road on my arm. And I drew those things. And the house is like upside down, but I think in [episode] 6, or 7… maybe even 8, she’s [Jessica Brown Findlay’s Lenina Crowne] like lying on my chest, and you see the thing.”

Interesting choice of words, considering that in the trailer, John, after spending enough time in New London to begin to see that maybe hegemony isn’t necessarily perfection, says, “You know I’ve been watching you people; if this place is so perfect, why is it upside down?”

In the interview, Roche notes that nothing in the show is accidental, even the focus on the “J” on John’s hand.

“Absolutely,” Ehrenreich says. “The idea was like in the Savage Lands he has this kind of romantic or creative thing that he has no place for the expression of, and also there’s a little bit of getting that angst out.”

So we know his character is sporting some ink, but what about the actor himself? “I don’t have any tattoos,” Ehrenreich says. “I’ve never felt like I could trust myself to not get sick of something in like a year.”

So now you know, not a solo tattoo on the man who became Solo.

All nine episodes of Peacock’s Brave New World are available for streaming now. And Brave New Pod: The Official Podcast of Brave New World is coming for your soma fix soon, so check out the trailer above, and don’t forget to subscribe to catch all the inside interviews with the talented folks in front of and behind the camera.

(Peacock and SYFY WIRE are both owned by NBCUniversal.)