Alan Tudyk Says His Robot Character Tested Higher Than Will Smith in 'I, Robot'

When you make a massive budget movie, you're going to want to test it out with audiences before you release it, so you know what parts they like. This allows you to make tweaks or do reshoots to solve some of the audience's bigger issues before you put it into the world.

And the way an audience feels can have ramifications not just on the movie but on the press tour as well.

Just listen to this story from Alan Tudyk, who played the robot in 2004's I, Robot. Watch Tudyk’s full interview on the “Toon’d In with Jim Cummings” podcast, and we'll go over his story after.

Alan Tudyk's Robot

In the informative podcast, Alan Tudyk tells a story about testing I, Robot.

Tudyk talks about how people did not know he was the character of the robot in the movie, because he was virtually nonexistent on the press tour.

Tudyk said, “A lot of people did not know I did Sonny the Robot in ‘I, Robot,’ and there is a reason,” Tudyk said. “They were doing test audiences for the movie, and they score the characters in this kind of test screening. I got word back: ‘Alan, you are testing higher than Will Smith.’ And then I was gone. I was done. There was no publicity, and my name was not mentioned.”

“I was so shocked,” he continued. “I was like, ‘Wait, nobody is going to know I’m in it!’ I put a lot into [that performance]. I had to move like a robot. At the time, I was very upset.”

Now, what he's inferring here is that either Smith got jealous and had him axed, or that publicists saw those numbers and didn't want him to be the focus of the tour, so they axed him to focus more on selling Smith's star power.

Either way, Tudyk's career probably suffered from not getting the exposure after playing a character audiences really loved.

Luckily, Tudyk's career sustained, and he's been able to play live-action characters we love and more mo-cap ones, like the robot in Rogue One and Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball.

This is an interesting look into the mechanisms of the press tour and the preferential treatment of the stars in a movie.

Let me know what you think about it in the comments.