Emily Blunt had not heard the news when she sat down for an upcoming episode of the Variety Awards Circuit Podcast this week. Stopping by the studio ahead of the Los Angeles premiere of A24’s “The Smashing Machine” on Monday night, the Oscar-nominated actor was handed a fresh headline: an AI-generated actress named Tilly Norwood had been unveiled over the weekend and was already drawing interest from talent agents.
Variety opened the report for Blunt during the interview, letting her read parts of the story aloud. The reaction from the star was immediate.
“Does it disappoint me? I don’t know how to quite answer it, other than to say how terrifying this is,” Blunt began. When shown an image of Norwood, she exclaimed, “No, are you serious? That’s an AI? Good Lord, we’re screwed. That is really, really scary, Come on, agencies, don’t do that. Please stop. Please stop taking away our human connection.”
Tilly Norwood is the first creation from Xicoia, a newly launched AI talent studio spun off from Eline Van der Velden’s production company Particle6. Van der Velden, who revealed the project during the Zurich Summit at the Zurich Film Festival, told attendees that studios are quietly developing similar experiments and that further announcements are expected in the coming months.
Blunt, visibly unsettled, noted that Norwood was designed to resemble a composite of familiar performers. Variety tells Blunt, “They want her to be the next Scarlett Johannson.”
She steadily responds, “but we have Scarlett Johansson.”
The comments come as Hollywood continues to wrestle with the use of artificial intelligence in film and television. The debate over digital likeness and AI protections was a flashpoint in last year’s dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, with actors calling for safeguards against their voices and images being replicated without consent. The backlash was almost immediate from Hollywood actors like Melissa Barrera, Lukas Gage and more.
Blunt stars in “The Smashing Machine” opposite Dwayne Johnson as Dawn Staples, the partner of MMA fighter Mark Kerr. Directed by Benny Safdie, the film debuted at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals, where it drew emotional reactions from audiences and cast alike, and has garnered early Oscar buzz.
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