Stars of 'Project Blue Book' Discuss Possibility of Extraterrestrial Contact on 'Good Morning America'

Actors Neal McDonough (left) and Aiden Gillen (right). (GMA / YouTube) — Actors Neal McDonough (left) and Aiden Gillen (right). *(GMA / YouTube)*

Two stars of the History Channel series Project Blue Book appeared on Good Morning America earlier this month, where they were asked if they believe in the subject matter portrayed by the show.

Neal McDonough, who plays General James Harding, and Aidan Gillen, who plays Dr. J. Allen Hynek, both appeared on the morning show.

"Do you guys believe?" McDonough asked the applauding audience. "Then yes, I believe."

"It’s interesting. Being a devout Catholic, who knows what else is out there? For us to think that it’s just us...I’m not so sure," he said. "But I certainly don’t look at the night sky the same way anymore. I go outside with my five kids and my wife Ruve, and we look at the sky now like ‘hm, I wonder if?’"

Gillen expressed a similar sentiment, saying that "the idea of us not being the only lifeforms in our universe is not outrageous."

"I’d like to think at some point in our future we’d be able to make contact, and probably will," he continued. "So yeah, I’m just not sure how it’s going to manifest itself."

McDonough and Gillen aren’t the first cast members to talk about UFOs or the possibility of extraterrestrial contact publicly since the show premiered in the winter of 2018.

Last July, Ksenia Solo, the actress who plays Susie Miller in the series, admitted in an interview with MEA Worldwide that she thinks she’s “seen a UFO.”

"I am [a believer in aliens], I may or may not have seen some stuff so I'm definitely a believer," said Solo during the interview.

"I think I've seen a UFO," she continued. "It was about maybe nine months ago after I filmed the first season of the show. I was overseas, someone else was with me. Otherwise, if I had been by myself I totally would've thought I was imagining something. But I think I saw something in the sky."

Solo, who plays an undercover Russian spy on the show, said she “didn’t know much” about the real-life Project Blue Book prior to filming the series.

Project Blue Book was a government study on UFOs that ran from 1952 to 1969.

"I didn't know much," she said of the study. "I didn't know about 'Project Blue Book' specifically, so it's been really fun and fascinating to learn that there were 12,618 cases of reported sightings that the investigation recorded and explored. I've learned a lot and I'm really excited for the next season 'cause we're diving deeper into Roswell and Area 51, so we got some big stuff coming up now."

The History Channel series largely focuses on Dr. J. Allen Hynek.

Dr. Hynek was a scientist and UFO investigator who was initially skeptical of the phenomenon when he signed on as a scientific consultant to the United States Air Force's Project Sign in 1948, but his opinion on the quality of evidence in favor of UFOs gradually shifted as he worked on projects like Sign and Blue Book.

He quickly grew frustrated with how flippantly his fellow scientists treated UFOs.

"Ridicule is not part of the scientific method, and people should not be taught that it is," Dr. Hynek wrote in an article for the April 1953 issue of the Journal of the Optical Society of America titled Unusual Aerial Phenomena. "The steady flow of reports, often made in concert by reliable observers, raises questions of scientific obligation and responsibility. Is there...any residue that is worthy of scientific attention? Or, if there isn't, does not an obligation exist to say so to the public--not in words of open ridicule but seriously, to keep faith with the trust the public places in science and scientists?"

Dr. Hynek went on to eventually found the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in 1973, and even presented a statement on UFOs to the United Nations General Assembly in 1978.

He remained a leader in the field of ufology until his death in 1986.

The Project Blue Book files are available online in the Blue Book Archive.

Season two of Project Blue Book premiered January 21st, and according to Gillen, will start “straight in with Area 51, and even before that Roswell, so the idea was to come back with some stories that people were familiar with.”

“We didn’t make it especially easy for ourselves the first time around by going for more obscure, you know, events or happenings or reports,” he said. “It was a good way to go about it, but I think we’ve earned the right now to just go straight in with these big parts of UFO lore.”

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