Emily Blunt on Algorithms: ‘I Hate that F—ing Word’

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | April 26, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | April 26, 2024 |

Emily Blunt threw her hat into the Hollywood tech angst ring in a recent interview with Fall Guy co-star Ryan Gosling for Vanity Fair Italy. She thinks her other movie, Oppenheimer, would not have been made if it were up to algorithms, since it’s a three-hour-long, R-rated biopic with no action scenes.

“Some new things frustrate me: algorithms, for example. I hate that fucking word, excuse the expletive! How can it be associated with art and content? How can we let it determine what will be successful and what will not?” She said. “Let me explain with an example. I was in a three-hour film about a physicist, which had the impact it had—the algorithms probably wouldn’t have grasped it. My hope is that ‘Oppenheimer’ and similar projects are not considered anomalies, that we stop translating creative experience into diagrams.”

Gosling agrees and says it plays a part in the roles he chooses.

“You can’t beat an algorithm at its job,” he said. “And this, paradoxically, forces me to be more human, to choose ‘handmade’ projects like ‘The Fall Guy,’ which is based on personal experiences, our footprints and our stories, which we poured into the characters.”

Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan echoed their concerns earlier this year, but he hasn’t given up hope:

“I’ve just made a three-hour film about Robert Oppenheimer which is R-rated and half in black-and-white—and it made a billion dollars. Of course, I think films are doing great. The crazy thing is that it’s literally the most successful film I’ve ever made. I’ve been doing this for 20 years and in the United Kingdom it’s my highest-grossing film. So I feel great about the state of the movie business, based on my own experience. But also based on seeing other movies break out, seeing audiences come back,” he said.

“The audience’s desire to be surprised, to see something new, to see something they did not know they wanted, that’s always been the most powerful force in theatrical film.”

The Fall Guy opens in US theaters on May 3rd.