Oscar Isaac’s Not-So-Artificial Intelligence
“Dude, we’re buds, we’re friends ... Give me complete control over you, dude.”
With big roles in two ridiculously anticipated sci-fi/action films—Star Wars: The Force Awakens and X-Men: Apocalypse coming out in the next year or so—and now Ex Machina opening this week, it’s hard to think Oscar Isaac was ever that same dude who played a struggling folk musician.
In Ex Machina, the directorial debut from writer Alex Garland (28 Days Later and Never Let Me Go), Isaac plays Nathan, the brilliant CEO of Bluebook, the largest search engine in the world, and the brain behind the world’s most advanced Artificial Intelligence, inventing an android, Ava (Alicia Vikander). When he invites Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a young programmer at Bluebook, to come to his secluded home to experiment with Ava, a series of mind games and mysteries ensues. What are Nathan’s motivations and what exactly is he trying to accomplish with both Caleb and Ava?
This week we were able to sit with Isaac at the Crosby Street Hotel in New York and pretty much let him expound on everything from drawing character tips from Stanley Kubrick and Bobby Fischer, to the use of practical sets on Star Wars, to what it means to believe that sexuality falls on a wide spectrum.
Paste: I’m so excited to talk to you again! Last time it was about A Most Violent Year, and since then you’ve entered this sci-fi realm with so many of your upcoming films! Were you a fan growing up?
Isaac: Yeah, I was! I’m a big fan of sci-fi, particularly Alex’s sci-fi. Sunshine is one of my favorites!
Paste: Ex Machina, Star Wars and X-Men—you’re in big sci-fi films where you have to act next to some astounding special effects technology—act with it even. Can you tell me about some of those challenges?
Isaac: The technology has come such a long way that it’s pretty unobtrusive. Especially with Ex Machina, we didn’t have to do any green screen at all. [Alicia] just wore her gray mesh suit and they ended up adding those bits later. There were never any adjustments that had to be made that were different from anything else. That was just acting with Alicia and Domhnall. In Star Wars, most of it was practical sets and there was some green screen in the back. For me, I mostly just had to act with people and actual things. It hasn’t been too different.
Paste: With Ex Machina, it’s almost like … a play. Alex knew he had a big budget concept but not the big budget to back it, so he’s like: Three characters, one setting; so smart! Were you nervous about how language-driven it is?
Isaac: That’s why I wanted to do it! It’s so rare that you get that. I loved it because it is; it’s driven by the language. It’s driven by the ideas. It’s driven by these very complex philosophical arguments but those are the action set pieces of the movie, these two guys torturing each other with their brains in these little rooms. Also, it’s so beautiful, the sets and the way that [cinematographer] Rob [Hardy] shot this thing.
Paste: You’re playing a villain.
Isaac: That’s questionable…
Paste: Ha! We’ll get to that. But you’ve mentioned Kubrick as someone that inspired you for this character.
Isaac: As well as Bobby Fischer. My character Nathan is someone that created Bluebook, the world’s most popular search engine, when he was 13 years old. So he’s a savant and clearly self-taught. He set up the offices of Bluebook in Long Island so he’s a New Yorker. He’s a little bit tough. I looked for that and I found that both Bobby Fischer and Kubrick, both amazing at chess—particularly Bobby Fischer—both from the Bronx, both self taught. With Bobby Fischer: Very dark, a lot of anger and resentment and paranoia that built up. With Kubrick, there was just a sense of power: When you see him, the intelligence that he has, especially when he peers over those glasses that he has. We got glasses that kind of look like Kubrick’s a little bit, those owl eyes, the beard and the baldhead. There was something visceral about that. I actually listened to a lot of Kubrick’s old interviews from the ’60s. There’s a musicality to that voice and a little bit of that Bronx accent. I just thought … with so much language, it would be nice if his voice was something that was interesting to listen to.