Emily Blunt is “terrified” of AI and chose not to rely on it during a pivotal sequence in Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film “Disclosure Day.”
The Spielberg-directed sci-fi film follows a Kansas City TV meteorologist, played by Blunt, who is suddenly overcome by a mysterious extraterrestrial force while taping a weather segment live on air.
The actress told “Hot Ones” host Sean Evans in the show’s latest episode that the key scene features her character speaking in a non-human language. “It’s a four-minute oner that we shot that leads up to that moment where she’s gradually sort of disintegrating.” She went on to say, “There’s various ways you could do it. You could go the AI route, which I’m a bit terrified of. I thought I could make some really strange sounds.”
Instead, Blunt opted to record the sound organically.
Popular on Variety
“I said maybe I could come in and we’ll just do a range of weird sounds. And it’s what we did,” she said. “I did sort of the clicking sounds, I did sort of humming sounds, consonant sounds, breathing strange sounds.” Strategically placed mics allowed the sound team to capture everything they needed, Blunt said: “The sound designer went away and created that weird sound.”
“Disclosure Day” is set to hit theaters June 12. The film also stars Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo, Wyatt Russell and Henry Lloyd-Hughes.
The logline reads, “If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? This summer, the truth belongs to seven billion people. We are coming close to … ‘Disclosure Day.’”
Spielberg developed the story with screenwriter David Koepp, who previously collaborated with him on the films “Jurassic Park,” “Jurassic Park: The Lost World,” “War of the Worlds” and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”
“Disclosure Day” marks the 37th film Spielberg has directed. The auteur’s filmography is packed with high-profile sci-fi titles, including two “Jurassic Park” movies and “War of the Worlds,” in addition to “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” “Minority Report,” “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” and “Ready Player One.”
Also in the “Hot Ones” episode, Blunt shared that Spielberg’s 1975 classic “Jaws” is her favorite movie of all time. “A lot of people I know watched it when they were kids,” she said. “I think if you watch it as an adult it takes on a whole different form of storytelling. … There’s so many beautiful themes that there are in all of Steven‘s movies. That it’s high-stakes action and it’s, you know, it’s big-scale storytelling. But I think he has this emotional grounding running through all of it in this humanity. So ‘Jaws’ will be it for me.”
Meanwhile, she said that “Mary Poppins Returns” was her most frightening on-set experience ever. In the 2018 movie, she was filming the British nanny’s arrival from up in the clouds. “I was terrified. I did three takes before my tolerance snapped and I was done,” she said. “You get up there and you go 25 feet, 30 feet, 40 feet, 60 feet. And I was like, ‘Nope.’ And the only thing you have, you just hope the wires are holding you. … And so I just ended up hanging there, waiting for them to call action like that. Like, looking up at the sky where I had no point of reference, but that was the most scared I’ve been.”