Darren Rea: How did you originally get involved with I, Robot?
Alan Tudyk: I read the script and liked it. I think that they had been auditioning for a while, but I was still working on a TV show at the time. Then that got cancelled and I was available.
DR: Had you read the short stories?
AT: Yes, I read the first book in High School. Once I got the part then I read a lot of other Assimov. I really enjoyed them, he’s such a great writer. He puts out the first three laws and then these robots are acting in a way that appears to be breaking the three laws. And then he finds a way to show you that logically they weren’t breaking the three laws, but they are still acting in ways that made it seem as though they were.
DR: Tell us about the green spandex. Did you ever secretly smuggle it off set to wear at home?
AT: [Laughs] No….. although, I do still have one at home. It’s for the specific reason that if they ever decide to do an I, Robot 2 I’m going to put it on anytime were talking about the negotiations so that I can remember fully what I’m getting myself into again [laugh]. Yeah, it just sort of hangs in my closet.
DR: How worrying was the whole green screen process? At the end of the day your acting can be great, but if the effects are sloppy the whole movie falls apart. Was that a concern while you were filming - that it might look terrible?AT: Yes. In any project you do, artistically there is an element of trust. You have to trust the people in charge. When the director says: “Trust me. This is how you should play the scene. It will look good this way,” you have to give over a lot of trust that they know what they are doing. But with I, Robot you had to give over even more. They were saying: “Okay, we are going to erase your face, but trust me we’re going to make the robot do everything you did - trust me.” At the end of the day I don’t think they really had to, but I did trust Alex Proyas [I, Robot's director]. He’s a great guy.
I was invite over to the digital house as we were filming so I got to see the progress of the effects. There would be a big screen with half of my face on one side and half of the robot’s on the other side and Alex would go through and say things like: “Alan’s mouth is curling more at the edge than the robot’s is.” Or an eyebrow would appear slightly differently to signify the human emotion of hope and he would say: “There’s hope in Alan’s face, but there isn’t hope in the robot’s face. I need the hope in the robot’s face. Achieve that would you?” He really stuck to it and followed what I did.
It was a gamble, but it paid off. I trusted the right man.
DR: Obviously, seeing the finished movie must have been a huge relief.
AT: Yeah, yeah most definitely.
DR: You had to go to robot school to learn to walk and move, but how did you come up with the voice for Sonny?
AT: I came up with all the movement too. On the DVD it suggests that Paul McCurio was the only one working on the movements for the robots, but that’s not true. I worked with a man named Steven Hill, who was a theatre director. Between us we discussed numerous movement disciplines, watched tapes of ballet, Japanese No Theatre and mime, just following different ways you can tell emotion through movement.
We ended up using a couple of things, but mainly the Alexander technique. This uses the skeleton as a frame, as we all do, but in the way that it’s supposed to be. It’s not just posture, but the balance of your skeleton. Using the most efficient movement possible - which a robot would do - to move from point A to point B.
The voice? I had gone to theatre school and had learned a lot about the voice and speaking and how to keep the words by themselves and not blending them all together. In more emotional times they do blend together. It was just about logic. Every word has it’s own place and it was about diction.
DR: There’s a slight bit of a British accent in there too - a bit like 2001’s Hal or Star War’s C3PO. Why is it that the British are always robots or bad guys in movies?
AT: [Laughs] Actually, I learnt in theatre school, they teach this Mid-Atlantic speech - which to many people sounds British, but they swear that it isn’t [Laughs]. It isn’t, but it does have elements of it.
It’s definitely not the common way that people speak in America, for sure. Or how I speak myself. But I don’t know why Englishmen get all the bad roles. So do the Australians. I suppose that it’s this element of ‘other’ that allows them to be mysterious in a way that an American can’t achieve - or something. I don’t know.
I hope the trend changes, because I want to be a bad guy at some point.
DR: This movie’s not the usual no brainer blockbuster that the Hollywood movie industry usually churns out. Do you think that the industry will follow I, Robot’s example and make more intelligent movies for a wider audience in the future?
AT: God I hope so. [Laughs] And I think audiences hope so. Audiences are pretty smart and they are starting to expect more. Now that there’s a DVD market they’re going to want something that is watchable time and time again. And they don’t want a movie where they can guess the ending two minutes after it starts.
DR: Do you embrace technology? Do you have all the latest gadgets?
AT: I do have all the latest gadgets. I can’t work any of them so it’s more from a consumer need and: “Look what I bought… one day I’ll plug it in.”
I’ve got friends who are gadget heads and they come round and show me how things work. I’ve got two computers and neither of them work right now. I’ve no idea how to work either.
DR: If robot’s were commercially available would you buy one? And what chore would you have it perform?
AT: Sure. I would love a robot. I could send it to work doing anything. I could get it to build an extra floor to my house. Build it would you? Or it could teach me to use all the gadget that I can’t work [laughs].
DR: Where you apprehensive about working with Will Smith?
AT: Yeah, I didn’t know what to expect because he’s sort of like a superstar.
The first time I met him he brought a fart machine to the dinner. It was one of those with a remote control button and he gave it to his producing partner, who kept it in his pocket. Will would set it off and then blame his partner for farting. But it was apparent that it was a machine immediately because Will couldn’t stop laughing. He couldn’t even do the joke because he was too amused by his own joke.
I knew then that we’d have a good time making this movie and we did. He’s a fun guy. He’s always looking for the joke and he likes to get you in on it. He doesn’t exclude anyone. He’s not just the one being funny while everyone else sits around laughing - he gets everybody involved in it. He was essential in making the whole process fun - especially at the four in the morning stage.
Some of the days, at the end of the week, we were shooting until four in the morning. As the day went on I got tired, but as the later the day got for Will the more hyper he seemed to become. So by four in the morning he was always singing a really bad song. Some cheese, cheese song, like Roberta Flack and he’d sing it at the top of his lungs, generally off key.
DR: You’ve had a varied career, you’ve been the pilot of a spaceship, a pirate, a stripper and a robot. It’s like your working your way through the fancy dress shop of parts. Are you pleased that you haven’t been typecast as anyone role?AT: Yeah. It’s a very colourful box of crayons. I’ve just played this Mexican drug dealer in an independent movie. It was written for a Mexican, but they made him an expatriate living in Mexico whose a gay drug dealer.
A lot of times people will come up to me and say: “Hey, you’re that guy from that movie,” whichever one they recognise me from. We’ll talk for a bit and they’ll say: “What else have you been in? Why don’t you work any more? Did you quit?” And I’ll say: “I was in this or that movie too.” And they’ll say: “Who were you in that movie?… Oh really you were that guy - with the accent and the hair?”