Hollywood’s Afraid of Tilly Norwood. Should They Be? - The Story
TechStuff
iHeartPodcasts
4.3 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
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Summary
Tilly Norwood caused quite a stir when she was introduced in late 2025. Her creator, actor-producer Eline Van der Velden, said she wanted Tilly to be the “Scarlett Johansson” of AI actors. But she immediately felt the backlash from Hollywood. Emily Blunt called Tilly “really, really scary,” and agencies said they wouldn’t sign her. But Eline is pushing forward, creating a TV show around Tilly, filled with all-new AI characters. Karah sat down with Eline to talk about how she created Tilly, how she taught her to “act,” and to discuss how Eline sees the future of AI in filmmaking.
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:19.7 | Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm Kara Price, and this is the story. Our weekly roundup episodes will be back soon. But today, I want to share something that rocked my Hollywood community last September. It's Tilly Norwood and it's an actress. And yes, it is the correct word to use because Tilly Norwood is an AI actress. |
| 0:40.8 | As you can imagine, there was an uproar. |
| 0:43.0 | Many A-lister spoke out against Tilly Norwood, and SAG After released a statement saying they didn't recognize Tilly as an actress. |
| 0:50.2 | And I completely understood the outrage. |
| 0:52.6 | What I didn't fully get was why Tilly Norwood existed in the first place. |
| 0:57.2 | So I reached out to the person behind the AI, Aline van der Velden. |
| 1:02.0 | It turns out Elene is an actress herself, an actress who was extremely good at physics |
| 1:07.6 | and spent a few years working to save the world through nuclear fusion. |
| 1:11.8 | But ultimately, the immediacy of acting won her back. In 2010, Eileen started to build a company |
| 1:18.0 | called Particle 6. Now that company is a well-known AI production studio, and Tilly Norwood is a |
| 1:24.6 | Particle 6 creation with a deliberately stated use. |
| 1:28.1 | So let's dive into our conversation. |
| 1:32.3 | So you want to create an actress. |
| 1:35.1 | How do you actually go about doing that? |
| 1:37.9 | I know, right? |
| 1:38.7 | Where do you start? |
| 1:39.7 | Yeah, where do you begin when you want to actually create an actress? |
| 1:43.7 | So I went to chat GPT and I said, hey, I want to make an AI actress. |
| 1:48.8 | Did you really? |
| 1:50.1 | Yeah, of course I did. |
... |
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