CraveOnline: I’m a huge fan of the original RoboCop. Huge. I saw this one and it struck me that the biggest structural change was, in the original film we spend a lot of time with Alex Murphy, there’s a montage, and then bam! He’s RoboCop. Here we spend less time with Alex Murphy before but we get to see that whole process of him losing his humanity.
Joel Kinnaman: Well no, we don’t spend that… There’s not that many scenes with Alex Murphy in the original.
It feels like there’s more time to me…
No, he comes into the police station, he goes into the locker room, he’s introduced, then he meets his partner, then they drive out to the thing and then he gets killed. It’s actually, in this version we actually have a couple more scenes with Alex Murphy than in the original.
Fair enough, but at the very least you do have more time where you’re losing your humanity.
Yeah.
Was that part of the appeal, getting to really sell that bit where they’re gradually picking away at him piece by piece?
You know, when they reveal what’s left of me…
Which is really fucked up…
Yeah. Yeah. For me that was one of the most difficult scenes to play too, because I have to portray the deepest existential anxiety and despair, and at the same time I have to be completely still. When you’re an actor and want to do that kind of thing you want to use your body, because if you think back to the most horrifying experiences of your life, when you’ve had the most anxiety, your body is very involved. You lie in a fetus position and you’re crying and you’re holding your stomach, and that’s also how you portray it as an actor. You use your body and when you’re doing that you also get the emotions. It’s like the physical memory. Here I didn’t have that luxury, so it was an extra high level of difficulty.
Did they have you in a brace for visual effects purposes, so you wouldn’t move?
Yeah, I mean I was in the docking station, but I’d move my head a little bit, so we took a steel wire into the helmet and tied me back into the thing so I was completely stuck in it. Because it’s also one of those things when you’re supposed to have perfect body language, you know because he’s a robot, and I usually tilt my head a little bit and that feels straight to me. [Tilts head.] This feels as straight to me.
Yeah, because you’re compensating with your eyes.
[Straightens head.] But that’s actually… so all of those things came into play as well.
Would they ever mess around with you, like leave you in there while everyone else went to lunch?
[Laughs.] No, they didn’t dare. Because I’m RoboCop. [Laughs.]
