When Parker Posey was a kid, she set her alarm clock to the tune of Lost in Space. The actress recalled to The New York Times about “getting up at 5:30 in the morning to watch the static turn to color when the show came on at 6.” Little did she know that 50 years later, she’d be lost in space herself.

When Posey got the call to play the villainous Dr. Smith on the 2018 Netflix reboot of the hit sci-fi show, she almost didn’t believe it. “I was like, ‘What? Are you serious?’ It was shocking to me,” Posey told Den of Geek. She fondly remembered the character from her childhood. “I loved this character, Dr. Smith. He seemed so unique,” she said. 

The new iteration of Lost in Space looks pretty different from the show Posey grew up with. It’s much more dramatic and less quippy than the old (in which Dr. Smith was played by Jonathan Harris). Producers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless told the Times they based the new Dr. Smith on the sly con man at the center of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Posey helped them shape this new Dr. Smith: “Parker allowed the Dr. Smith that you’re seeing to exist,” Sharpless said.

A devious villain like Smith may at first seem a strange fit for Posey, who’s well-known for her witty turns in improv-driven Christopher Guest mockumentaries like Best in Show and Netflix’s Mascots. But, as Sharpless noted, she quickly made the role her own. “I’m being as real as I can, but I can’t help but be funny. I just can’t help it,” Posey continued to Den of Geek. “It’s fine to find in the environment what is real but also what can be funny that hasn’t been exposed before in the sci-fi world.”

Her memories of the original show didn’t hurt either. “There was something about the show that children loved too, that you saw other kids acting, like Bill Mumy [the original Will Robinson],” Posey recalled. “I loved him, and I loved his relationship to the robot.” Now a grown-up, Parker Posey gets to be the kid talking to the robot.