Tuesday, September 30, 2025 |
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Who is Tilly Norwood? If your guess is a hotshot rising actress, you're right—sort of. Norwood is an AI-generated character created by London-based AI studio Particle6. She looks like an amalgamation of a whole bunch of celebrity actresses, has an Instagram page, and has already starred in a commercial. But here's the real dystopian rub: The company's founder claims that Norwood has signed with a talent agency. Hollywood, understandably, is furious. Everyone from flesh-and-blood actors to SAG-AFTRA have denounced Norwood and Particle6's seeming designs to make her the first AI A-lister. Esquire's Eric Francisco asks—and answers—all of your biggest questions below. – Brady Langmann, senior entertainment editor Plus: |
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Tilly Norwood is the talk of Tinseltown. Here's where she came from, why everyone in Hollywood is furious, and what she might do next. |
At the Zurich Film Festival last week, London-based AI studio Particle6 announced the launch of a new company, Xicocia, which Deadline describes as an "AI talent studio designed to create, manage, and monetize" its stable of digital characters. The launch unveiled Particle6's first AI-generated "actress": Tilly Norwood, a 20-something brunette whose defining personality trait seems to be "iced coffee." To be clear: Tilly Norwood is not real. She is a digital figurine, the end result of a million ones and zeroes. She lives in a hard drive, not rain-soaked London as seen in her AI-overrun Instagram. But she is now all over Particle6's website, which suggests how much the company's AI endeavors hinge on Tilly as a de facto mascot. On September 27, Deadline reported that an unnamed talent agency signed on Tilly Norwood as a "client." With AI slop overwhelming the Internet and questions of labor, economics, and the diminished importance of human perspective in art wrapped up in the disruption, the Tilly Norwood case encapsulates so much of the resentment artists—and actors in particular—have toward the dizzying rush to an increasingly AI-fascinated world. |
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Glen Powell had a secret. The actor teamed up with screenwriter-producer Michael Waldron to adapt Eli Manning's football-world-famous "Chad Powers" prank—in which the retired quarterback put on a disguise for a Penn State football tryout—into a TV show. The Waldron–Powell duo was hardly the first team to attempt to morph a sketch into a hit TV series, but things were actually ... going ... pretty well? The two landed on a brilliant premise. The hilarious Hulu series, which debuts its first two episodes today, follows Russ Holliday (Powell), a blue-chip college quarterback who crashes out during a game on live TV. Inspired by the great Mrs. Doubtfire, he stages a comeback—disguising himself as the country-bumpkin goofball Chad Powers. Waldron and Powell figured out everything about Chad—the nose, the hair, those chipmunk cheeks—but they had yet to land on his voice. Powell hid Chad's drawl from the crew. As Waldron remembers, Powell finally busted out his voice at a table reading with a whole lot of 20th Century Fox and Hulu executives in the room. It's a delicious cocktail of Bobby Boucher and Forrest Gump, imbued with maximum weirdo energy from Powell. "It's so funny because it really feels like something Russ is making up on the fly," Waldron tells me. "By the end, there's such a sweetness to it. Glen and I are really close. Unfortunately, now it's weird to me when I hear Glen Powell's voice come out of his mouth. Because I'm like, 'This is who you're meant to be.'" |
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The narrative that's starting to form in the wake of the 2025 Ryder Cup is the difference in the American and European programs. Keegan Bradley willingly (and, in my book, unfairly) shouldered most of the blame post-loss, talking about his player pairings, preparation, and course design. I'd say it's more structural. The European model has always prioritized stability, but now there's relentless focus on the details that I think mimics the Moneyball you see all over the continent's soccer leagues. It's starting to widen the gap; Europe has won nine of the 12 Ryder Cups played this century. And I think Europe's Loro Piana uniforms are the perfect metaphor for what you're seeing on the course. No, I'm not being facetious, though I may—as pretty much everyone at this magazine can be guilty of—think about clothes too much. But if you're talking about the chasm in institutional preparation that's opening up in this competition, go as deep as you can. The pretournament promotional work shows just how obsessive the European group and its captain, Luke Donald, are about these uniforms. |
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 One Battle After Another Will Win Best Picture |
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I'm sure you can relate to this: Few things in life annoy me more than having to remember all my passwords. I could spill sauce all over my shirt and still hold my temper—but nothing infuriates me more than going through "I forgot my password" emails just to create yet another login that I'll forget again. So, you could imagine how much fun I was having in the theater watching One Battle After Another. Leonardo DiCaprio's character screams into a payphone until his eyes bulge out his sockets because he can't remember his goddamn password during a life-or-death emergency. Leo? I have never felt more seen. That's often the case with Paul Thomas Anderson's films. He's one of my favorite directors, in part because he gravitates toward these short-tempered and out-of-the-loop characters to drive his stories. In Punch-Drunk Love, Adam Sandler does his best pre-Uncut Gems dramatic rage routine. Daniel Day-Lewis can barely stand mild annoyances in Phantom Thread, and Joaquin Phoenix's Inherent Vice P.I. stumbles around a noir that simply takes care of itself. Thanks to Anderson's team-up with DiCaprio, One Battle After Another has a solid shot at going down as the best movie of the year. At the very least, it's certainly proving to be the most controversial. In the film, which debuted this past weekend, DiCaprio plays a stoned and paranoid ex-revolutionary named Bob Ferguson who has checked out of the fight. However, America isn't done with him yet. The corrupt and relentless Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn) returns from Bob's past to kidnap his daughter (played by newcomer Chase Infiniti), forcing Bob back into the action. Surprisingly, it makes for one of the funniest turns in DiCaprio's career—and one of Anderson's best films. You might ask yourself: What could be so controversial about that? Well, I'll break it down. Outside of One Battle After Another's gags with DiCaprio and old passwords, the majority of the film deals with an out-of-control American military machine hellbent on ridding the world of any resistance to its authority. Sound familiar? So, while Col. Lockjaw destroys DiCaprio's seemingly peaceful life, characters played by the bombastic Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, and Benicio del Toro continue the fight against immigration raids and other deadly abuses of power. For the most part, critics so far seem to agree: One Battle After Another is a poignant film that balances Hollywood humor, action, and real-world fears. NPR and The New York Times heralded the film as a revolutionary Best Picture contender that could dominate the sociopolitical conversation for months. On the other side, Fox News panned the film as a "#Resistance wet dream." And yet, there's another conversation happening about One Battle After Another that is seemingly coming from no definitive side of the aisle at all. All over TikTok this weekend, viewers were asking—quite simply—why the film spends so much time on the 50-year-old white guy who is lost amidst the madness? Shouldn't the film focus on the powerful characters who were fighting while he gave up? Well, DiCaprio's role is a bit deeper than mere comic relief. His journey throughout the film is the same as the audiences, as we're clued in on the fight that Regina Hall and Benicio del Toro's characters have been fighting for decades. As Anderson explained in Esquire's latest cover story, "No one can outrun what's inevitable, which for him is to be a father and to have another generation come up from behind." Bob Ferguson eventually re-enters the political maelstrom because that's what this movie is arguing for as well. When shit hits the fan, and Col. Lockjaw and his white nationalist cronies bust down your door, we're going to need everyone who thought that they had the privilege to check out finally come to their senses. You could see that rallying cry play out this past week, when public outrage over Donald Trump and the FCC's attack on free speech forced ABC to push back against the administration and put Jimmy Kimmel back on the air. That is One Battle After Another's fight as well—and I imagine that Anderson is hoping that you see that now, before the Col. Lockjaw-esque figures of the world have the power to make it even more of a reality. So yes, the film spends a significant time forcing Bob Ferguson into the fight, because that's the exact kind of person who needs to hear it most. I can't say if that definitively makes One Battle After Another the best movie of the year so far—but hopefully it's a strong sign for America that the film is generating the same fire under audiences' asses as it did for Bob Ferguson. |
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Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another |
Thank you to everyone who reached out with their favorite Robert Redford films. The two most-mentioned films were The Sting and All the President's Men. The latter certainly influenced quite a few Hollywood Best Picture nominees since. I reckon we wouldn't have great films like Spotlight or The Post without it. For One Battle After Another's release this past weekend, we kept the ball rolling and released a ranking of Paul Thomas Anderson's best films. See where One Battle comes in on the rankings here and let me know which PTA movie is your favorite at josh.rosenberg@hearst.com. Did someone forward you this email? Sign up here. |
The Continuing Adventures of the Esquire Entertainment Desk |
Timothy Olyphant and I chatted for an extremely fun and candid interview about Alien: Earth. Though the actor plays a robot in the sci-fi TV series, he was ever the comedian during our conversation about fame, bleaching his eyebrows, and receiving wacky acting notes from directors. Read the interview here. Can Star Wars matter again? Anthony Breznican explores the question in an essay following The Mandalorian & Grogu trailer and images from Star Wars: Starfighter. Read his thoughts on the future of Star Wars here. Raúl Castillo told me about his character's bloody, game-changing turn in Task episode 4 last night. "It was almost like being at your own funeral," he said. Check out the full interview here. |
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Leonardo DiCaprio / photo by: Paul Thomas Anderson |
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The Cliff-Hanger's Winners and Losers of the Week (Emmys Edition) |
Winner: Sean Penn Give this man the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor right now. One Battle After Another's Colonel Lockjaw is an absolutely unhinged performance from the veteran actor. It will without a doubt land him back on the Academy stage. Loser: Sinclair and Nexstar After two of the largest TV station owners in the country threatened to keep Kimmel off the air despite his return to broadcast, both Sinclair and Nexstar folded within the week. Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be back on the air—for the whole country this time—on Friday. Winner: David Rysdahl After weeks of Alien: Earth viewers guessing where that eyeball monster would end up at the end of the series, David Rysdahl's Dr. Sylvia jolts up from the dead as the new host of the intelligent yet parasitic creature. Hopefully, the sci-fi series picks up a season 2 renewal so that viewers can find out what their favorite new monster is up to next. Loser: Netflix Black Rabbit was a hit of an idea from Jason Bateman and Jude Law, playing two brothers against type in a crime thriller that feels like a blend of Ozark and The Bear. Yet, after a drop-all-the-episodes-at-once release strategy, the conversation around Black Rabbit is mostly over. It was cute while it lasted, Netflix, but maybe the days of the binge release are over. Black Rabbit deserved better! Winner: Charlie and Summer Our next Air Bud(s) has been chosen. After a countrywide talent search for the next hooping pup, Air Bud Returns director Robert Vince unveiled the two new golden retrievers who will play Buddy in the upcoming film. Watch the adorable announcement video here. |
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