Frankie Muniz on Renner, AI Gone Wrong and more!

[00:00:09] Frankie, thank you for joining me today on Pop Culture Unplugged. Thanks for having me, excited to chat with you. Excited to have a friend, I watched the movie last night, but I liked about it, you know, I like how it's like the whole like, you know, you got the mix of sci-fi, romance, psychological twist, what drew you to this role? Probably all of that, right? I remember reading the script and, you know, when you start on page one, when I got to page 45, I was like, okay, I wasn't expecting that. And then when you get to page 90, you're like, that went a completely different direction than I was ever expecting. You know what I mean?

[00:00:38] I just remember not being able to put it down. So I was super excited to have the opportunity to be a part of the movie, but also for the role. I mean, very different from anything I've done. And it made me nervous, but I think that's a good thing, right? It definitely challenged me, but I'm thrilled with how it all turned out. And I hope people love it.

[00:01:00] I think they will. And I like, you know, your character, you know, that creates an AI life coach, ends up having his mother's personality. So like, you know, playing a role like this, how do you, where technology meets personal relationships collide? You know, tell us a little about that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it is one thing with AI, right. We're seeing even in the real world these days, right? Like, right.

[00:01:20] I'm going to see some of the, like the programmer programmed into the AI, whether they like it or not, right. There's going to be some biases and some, you know, things like that. And, and definitely Renner wasn't planning on programming his mother in there, right.

[00:01:35] Because you see throughout the movie or you hear throughout the movie that they had a very rough relationship. And, you know, you, you kind of don't know, he puts so much trust into the technology, so much trust into the AI and the relationship with the AI really, really like engages with it to, to help him. And it is helping him.

[00:01:53] But then you start to realize like, you don't know who to trust, right. Do you trust the AI? Do you trust the Jamie character? Does he trust himself? Like, doesn't even know what to think. And it, and it really kind of drives him crazy, but yeah, without giving too much away, you know, it's, it's obviously, you know, something that we are going to see in, in, we are seeing in the real world too, right. So what is the, what is the limit, you know, of, of the power that AI and technology is going to have?

[00:02:22] How did you mix the balance between like, you know, sci-fi and dark comedy for this role? Man, I mean, a lot of that was the writing, right. Like I, I, it's not something that I, when we were doing it, I was never thinking of the comedy, if that makes sense. Like Renner is 100% just like doing what he, like he had to do. And there's, there's funny moments just in the, in the neuroticness of his character a little bit.

[00:02:48] Um, so I didn't have to worry about like playing both sides of like the drama and the comedy. Um, and, uh, I don't know. Yeah. I, I, you know, this was, this was a role that I really dove in. I've never really fully done that as an actor. I kind of like, you know, think about it the night before what I'm going to do or read the script. You know, I kind of, okay.

[00:03:07] I learned lines and I go out there and I just kind of wing it just to be honest, but this one, like, I really feel like I gave it my all and, uh, had a lot of like emotion that I found in me that I didn't know was in there, not for the role, but like, even just like personally in me to where I, like, sometimes I'd leave the set and go like,

[00:03:26] like, is this emotion I'm feeling because I just filmed that crazy scene or is it like me in real life? Like I had a hard time distinguishing the two, which is when you've seen this movie, it's weird to think that like, I had a hard time distinguishing my life from this character. Cause it's not like this character at all. Yeah. What do you think part of Renner's journey resonated with you the most, you know, because between the, you know, the love control consequences, you know, what resonated you with the most with it?

[00:03:54] Oh man. Like I said, there's just such a wide array of emotion portrayed, right? You, you see him in the beginning. You don't really know much about him. You start to learn throughout the movie with him opening up to Jamie within, you know, having the flashbacks of his mother and, and, and, and all that, that you see that there is a little,

[00:04:10] there's some definitely some trauma there. And I don't know. I just, I, I felt like you see such an evolution in the short, the short time span, you know what I mean? And, and just the, I feel like it was very unsuspecting, unexpected ending of, of, of, of where it goes. And I love those types of movies, right?

[00:04:39] I love when you're watching a movie and you really don't know what's going to happen. You know what I mean? Like you can't even like, I don't know if you watch this movie, maybe if you watch a lot of movies, but you probably didn't think what was going to happen, happen. I, you know, especially the first 45 minutes, it's like one movie. And then the second 45 minutes is a whole different genre, you know what I mean? And I love that element about it. You think it's like this nice, like getting to know, like kind of romantic, he's getting to find himself, you know what I mean? He's venturing out.

[00:05:07] What about the AI voice for Marsha? Did you like have an interaction with her while you were filming or was this like done after you guys filmed everything? Yeah. So no, I mean, no, they did all that after. So I was, anytime I'm interacting with the AI, it's like literally this fake looking eyeball that had a light and Robert, the director would be reading the lines. And, you know, you always have like an image in your head when you read a script or when you're filming something of what it's going to be in the end.

[00:05:35] And I thought, you know, she did such a phenomenal job with the voice and it really kind of adds that element that you need. And, but yeah, that's, that's sometimes not the hard part about being an actor is like, yeah, I can't imagine. I've never done like one of those crazy green screen movies where like nothing's real. I feel like that'd be really hard to like pretend like you're jumping off a building and you're not, you know what I mean?

[00:05:59] So, but no, I, you know, I, like I said, I think all the, I think all the acting in the movie, I'm happy with how my acting was. And I never say that, but like Violet and, you know, Taylor and like, you know, Marsha, like everyone was really, really good. And, you know, such a small cast, but I think everyone did a good job. So I think that's what makes the movie even more intriguing. I spoke with Violet before an amazing actress. Yeah, she is. I remember being intimidated by her on set.

[00:06:27] Like we were doing rehearsals and it worked for the character. Cause like in the beginning, I'm supposed to be kind of intimidated by her character. Right. And I remember having that in real life of like, I just didn't feel like, cause she was so good as an actress. And I was like, I don't know why I can keep up, you know, but it worked. You did though. You did. It worked for the role a hundred percent. Yeah. Good luck with the film. I can't wait for everybody to watch this. I think they're going to enjoy it. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Have a great day. See you. See you.