Aimee Garcia On Jose Padilha's ROBOCOP; "I Felt Like I Was Doing A Play"

Well, she’s Gary Oldman’s assistant so she’s a fellow scientist. It’s just been great. Yesterday I had a scene with Joel and Gary and I really felt like I was doing a play. I haven’t done theater in a while so it was just so wonderful to work with such talented actors. I have to say, I think Dexter really was so instrumental in helping me feel completely comfortable working with Gary Oldman who just got nominated for an Oscar and Joel who won the Swedish version of the Oscar, so I didn’t feel out of place, I didn’t feel overwhelmed because I’ve been working with Michael C. Hall so I feel very comfortable and she’s a great character. She has her Ph. D. from MIT. She and Gary Oldman kind of bring Robocop to life and she is whip smart and just such a fun, smart role because I think to be part of an experiment of this kind of epic proportion, you have to be really well read and schooled in everything from robotics to physics to brain computer interface to chemistry to biology. It’s great to be able to play someone who is super, super smart.

Look, it’s a huge franchise. It’s a highly anticipated film. I think it kind of comes with the territory so the crew is just focused on shooting. Given the track record of the director, coupled with the cast of Abbie Cornish and Michael Keaton and Joel and Gary, I joked yesterday that the top 10 people in the Robocop cast have all either been nominated or won a Tony, an Emmy, an Oscar or a Golden Globe. It’s almost put together like an independent film but with a franchise budget, so I’m so excited. Like I said, yesterday my scene with Gary and Joel, I felt like I was doing a play. I didn’t feel like I was doing a sci-fi green screen movie and I think that that’s really going to make it hopefully a classic film and make it more like a Matrix type of movie, that not only is cool with the special effects and the greenscreen and the explosions, but it also makes you think and really challenges you intellectually. I think it’s going to be great because so far all the footage I’ve seen and anything that I’ve been a part of has just completely exceeded my expectations.

Oh, Jose is great. He is such an incredible director. I always say respect is something that you have to earn. You can’t pay for it. You can’t force it. It’s something that comes with the decisions that you make and every single person on the crew and the cast just really respects him and trusts him and somehow even though I’m sure he’s under tremendous pressure, he keeps it fun, he’s cracking jokes, he’s showing me how to say swear words in Portuguese. It’s just so fun and he is just such an incredible filmmaker. Like I said, he comes from a documentary background so there is nothing formulaic about him. He can’t even be formulaic if he tried. The only thing he’s done is documentaries and an incredible movie franchise called Elite Squad. So he’s naturally gritty, he’s completely organic. We were doing a scene the other day and we just kept going, even though we didn’t plan on going and the actors didn’t have any marks and the cameras kept rolling and the actors kept going. Jose didn’t call cut because something magical was happening. I feel like that kind of director is going to deliver a really great film because he’s assuming that the audience is super smart so I just cannot wait for this movie. While this is obviously also called Robocop, it has such a fresh perspective and it also really makes you think because I don’t think it’s a sci-fi movie. They’re making mechanical cockroach robots that are going into rubble to save earthquake victims. That’s in 2012. These are things that we’re dealing with now. These things that are happening overseas, could they be prevented. So I think that this movie is very, very relevant and it’s really going to make people think because robots are not something of the future. I mean, planes can fly themselves now. Robots are a very real part of our lives and that’s what this movie addresses. It’s not just a cool special effects film.