“Artificial” isn’t hitting theaters until December, but Andrew Garfield is already sparking Oscar buzz for his performance as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Luca Guadagnino‘s tech tale, which follows the five-day period in 2023 when Altman was fired and then rehired, earned rave reviews after its world premiere at New York Film Festival last week. Both Garfield and “Anora” breakout Yura Borisov — who plays Ilya Sutskever, the OpenAI co-founder who ousted Altman — have now entered the awards race, with Garfield campaigning in supporting and Borisov in lead.
Speaking to Variety on the red carpet at its London Film Festival premiere on Sunday, Garfield — who has been Oscar-nominated twice but never won — reacted humbly to the praise. “As I’m getting older, I’m starting to understand that the things outside of ourselves, we just have no control over. And the only consistent thing for me is trying to make work that I feel proud of,” he said. “I feel really, really proud of this film … It was a really, really intense shoot. And then I’m so flattered that anyone is going to see this film in the first place, let alone talk so nicely about it. That’s my genuine response. I try and keep it in that perspective.”
Borisov, who was up for a supporting actor Oscar for “Anora” in 2024, chimed in with: “It’s a miracle!”
He added, “It’s unpredictable, I don’t know what to say. I’m really curious how people will feel. I’ll see what happens.”
Besides Garfield and Borisov, “Artificial” also stars Monica Barbaro as former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk and Mark Rylance as “Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton. All were on hand for the London premiere.
Asked about the timeliness of the movie, Garfield said: “It’s here, it’s now. And the timing couldn’t be more exciting and important, I think, because it’s about the figures that are in the news right now. Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, Elon and all the major players that are kind of governing and holding the reins of this new technology, or occasionally losing the reins of this new technology. It’s really about that.”
Added Barbaro, “I think AI is being used everywhere, in every industry. It’s kind of the No. 1 conversation right now, and I think that’s important to sort of question the motives of those who have created that kind of technology that has that much power.”
Even before its debut, “Artificial” has been the subject of much discussion as Amazon MGM Studios dropped the film in June, shortly after Amazon invested $50 billion in OpenAI. Neon then picked it up for distribution and is mounting its awards campaign.
In an interview with Vanity Fair last week, Altman addressed the film for the first time and said that that he did not speak to anyone at Amazon about dropping the movie, including Jeff Bezos, and “I don’t know of anyone else who did.”
He also revealed that the movie filmed outside of his house and claimed that he waved to Garfield, who he admitted did nail his walk and “quirky mannerisms.” Garfield confirmed to Variety that he doesn’t recall seeing Altman while filming.
“I heard him say that and I was like, I would have remembered,” he said. “I was so aware of looking for him when we were shooting near his house and on those streets. I didn’t see him and I was very, very disappointed that I didn’t. It was thrilling, it was exciting and terrifying. We were right outside his house, but no, I didn’t see him.”
Inside the Royal Festival Hall, Guadagnino introduced the film on stage alongside his cast as the crowd clapped rigorously in anticipation. Guadagnino, known for his stylistic and sexy films like “Call Me by Your Name” and “Challengers,” admitted that “Artificial” was “the most complicated movie to imagine because the world of the Silicon Valley is the least seductive visually.”
“I hope you will be seduced by the movie, though,” he continued. “It was a lot of research, very, very deep, extensive research. It was a great journey to understand the people and the places and infrastructure, and we tried to go for the most close attention to detail as possible.”
Garfield said he found working with the director again to be “irresistible” after last year’s “After the Hunt.”
“Luca is irresistible as a filmmaker, and Luca combined with such a juxtaposed world on its own is irresistible. Like, how is he going to make this erotic?” Garfield said. “You’ll see how he made it erotic. He finds the nooks and the crannies. It’s really a remarkable thing to work with Luca because he’s one of our radical film cinema artists.”
Garfield also revealed that he also had an “old dangling thread” from “The Social Network,” in which he played Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin (and had a very memorable monologue), but was originally in the running to play Mark Zuckerberg.
“I had auditioned for Mark Zuckerberg and some other guy got it. But I was kind of told that I was going to play Mark Zuckerberg for a few weeks, it was dangled in front of me,” he said. “So I started immersing myself in Mark and then [producer] David Heyman called me to his office and said, ‘Well, there’s a better guy for it.’ … But I started to imagine myself into that responsibility, leading humanity into this next chapter and what it takes to take the burden of that responsibility. What kind of personality, what kind of facets does this person have, what kind of resilience a person has to have.”
Garfield added of Altman: “I’m still deeply curious about Sam, he’s unfolding before our eyes as we speak and it’s kind of endlessly fascinating, like AI itself I guess.”
Barinholtz brought some comedic relief by saying of playing Musk, “I had never heard of him. Just not a news guy!”
On a more serious note, he said that the film required him to separate the tech mogul’s present-day persona from how he was viewed when he co-founded OpenAI.
“I think we have the tendency to think about someone the most recently we saw them, and at that time, it was DOGE and chainsaws and kind of crazy behavior,” he said. “But this story takes place long before then, it takes place at this time where he really was looked at like a god, especially amongst these Silicon Valley people.”
Barinholtz said Guadagnino helped get the actors into the spirit on set. “Every time Elon walked into the room, if one of the cast members was not in awe of him, Luca would come up like: ‘This is Elon Musk! You need to be like, oh my God!'” Barinholtz said, sparking laughter in the room.
During the film, audience members both laughed and gasped in horror as the events of OpenAI’s founding and 2023 unraveling were brought to screen. As the credits rolled, enthusiastic clapping echoed throughout the Royal Festival Hall, making it clear that “Artificial’s” momentum would not be stopping in London.
“Artificial” is set to debut in U.S. theaters on Dec. 25 and in the U.K. on Jan. 22.