With his “Resident Alien” series coming to an end, celebrated “Firefly” star and frequent voice actor Alan Tudyk recently reflected on his career during an interview with the Toon’d In podcast.
During the chat, he revealed that not very many know that he voiced the robot Sonny in 2004’s sci-fi action film “I, Robot” – and there’s a reason for that.
Inspired by Isaac Asimov’s short story collection of the same name, the Alex Proyas-directed film is set in the future world of Chicago in 2035. A detective (Will Smith) tries to unravel a confusing murder that may or may not have been caused by a member of the autonomous police force named Sonny (Tudyk).
It turns out that during test screenings for the film, his character scored higher with audiences than the film’s star Will Smith. As a result, he was essentially barred from participating in any of the film’s publicity, and his name was effectively removed from press materials beyond the standard cast/credits list:
“They were doing test audiences with the movie and they score the characters and I got word back, ‘Alan, you’re testing higher than Will Smith’. And then I was gone. I was gone. There was no publicity and my name was not mentioned. I was so shocked, I was like, ‘But wait, nobody’s going to know that I [play the robot].'”
Tudyk also provided motion-captured for the CG character, saying he put a lot into his performance, and added that “at the time, I was very upset” he got essentially pushed aside.
Bridget Moynahan, Bruce Greenwood, James Cromwell, Chi McBride, and Shia LaBeouf co-starred in the film which ended up earning $353 million from a $120 million budget.
