Comic-Con 2013: Abbie Cornish Talks Robocop

I would have been excited to talk to Abbie Cornish anyway, but having a chat with a beautiful movie star about Robocop was extra special. The original movie was so important to me, as the story of a man who died, and the corporation whose technology brought him back thought they owned him, but they couldn’t own Alex Murphy. Jose Padilha directs the 2014 version of Robocop starring Joel Kinnaman. Cornish plays Murphy’s wife so the fact that this is even a major enough character to attract an A-list star is an exciting development in the story.

Cornish participated in a press conference for the film with the cast and Padilha at San Diego Comic-Con, after which I followed her into the back for a one on one. Up close I could see that her red Herve Leroux dress had a lovely horizontal line pattern, and when she leaned back in it Cornish looked extra loungey. She also leaned in and patted me during the conversation. She was really engaged about Robocop and that makes me happy.
 

CraveOnline: One thing I wanted to tell you, that’s apropos at Comic-Con and I don’t think you hear enough: I loved Sucker Punch.

Abbie Cornish: Did you? Awesome. Sweet.
 

Do you get that enough?

I get it sometimes but it’s a love/hate film, you know. People either love it or they hate it and there’s not really much in between. There’s some people who are like, “That movie is really confusing. I didn’t get that movie at all.”
 

Did that surprise you or were you expecting it to go over that way?

I knew that when I saw it. Not when I read it because originally it was R-rated, so the way it read originally was much more visceral and guttural. Those worlds didn’t have to be so explained, so almost even in its craziness and its violence it was more receivable and more understandable. I think making it PG-13, having to make sense of all that and having to withdraw some of the sexuality and the violence, it kind of made it more confusing.
 

Making sense is a bad idea.

[Laughs]
 

No, I’m serious. It didn’t make too much sense for me to enjoy it.

No, I know. So it’s just one of those things where different people love it for different reasons. I had the time of my life shooting it. I had an amazing time.
 

Is Ellen Murphy a much larger role in this Robocop?

She’s actually called Clara Murphy. I don’t know why. I have to ask Jose why he changed that. It’s funny, I never asked the question. I just took it on because it seemed right, but yeah, she’s massive. This time the wife’s more integrated into the story so you see her in the beginning. She has to sign the consent form for him to become Robocop.
 

Really? That’s interesting.

Yeah, because it’s as if in real life what would happen. Say we were husband and wife and I was about to die. Someone would have to make the choice, right?
 

Does she sign because she hopes it will bring him back? Does she fully understand what she’s signing?

Yeah, one of her lines, and it’s not a spoiler because it’s in the very beginning of the film, is when they say to her, “Your husband is the perfect candidate for this. This can keep him alive.” She says, “Look, you’re telling me you can save his life, but what kind of life would we have?”
 

Is it easy for her to see him in the suit?

No, I don’t think any of it’s easy. I mean, I definitely had the more serious, apart from Robocop himself, pretty serious dramatic role because I’m playing a wife who at the very beginning of the film has her entire existence stripped away from her and it falls out from underneath her feet. Her husband, her family, her life, everything, her love. So the rest of the movie, she’s not only fighting all of that but she’s also fighting in a way this idea of robot vs. man, corporation, government, a lot of political, social stuff but also a lot of intimate deep human topics as well.
 

Is Omnicorp selling Clara a bill of goods, like what they’re promising is not really what they do?

No, no, it is what they do but I just think there’s an element that is slightly unknown about turning a man into a half man, half robot. There is also some tinkering that can go on. There’s an ambiguous, even amongst Dr. Norton, who Gary Oldman plays, himself about just where the line blurs, so what’s really cool in the film is you see that experimentation phase as well, of Robocop becoming Robocop, the origin of and transitions. They improve on the suit, then they improve on this and then they improve on this part of how his brain’s interacting with the suit. It’s pretty cool. Jose’s incredibly intelligent. He sort of started off in physics, mathematics and all of that stuff himself and then became a director. He’s got a genius level IQ so he brings all of that and a lot of philosophy as well.
 

An interesting thing that was unfortunately sort of abandoned in the Robocop sequels was that OCP was trying to convince the wife that he wasn’t Alex Murphy anymore. They program him to tell her her husband’s gone. Given the way you describe Omnicorp including her in the process, are they trying to keep Clara involved with Alex?

Yeah, sort of. It’s a little bit of that situation of keeping her there because that’s the right thing to do, but also keeping enough distance so that they can control him because she’s the human side of him.
 

Yeah, I never bought in Robocop 2 that she would believe him when he says “I’m not your husband anymore.”

No. And also too, a little bit in the first Robocop, that’s the one I’m hooked on because for me it was my childhood. I’ve seen 2 and 3 but they didn’t have the same impact as 1 because I was a kid and I grew up with brothers. We had it on VHS and stuff. In the first one, she’s almost more like a figment of his imagination, his memories.
 

But there’s that beautiful scene where he goes to the open house.

Home, I know, and he gets so cranky he smashes the [monitor].
 

Heartbreaking.

I love that scene.
 

Me too. You said in the press conference this was your easiest film.

Yeah, it’s the easiest film I ever made.
 

What was the hardest then?

The hardest film was probably Bright Star and the only reason I would say that is because of the subject matter, because I made Bright Star three months after Heath [Ledger] passed away. So it was just very difficult to lose my best friend and then go and make a film about the loss of someone that someone loved. Basically it was an art imitates life moment. Heath was one of my best friends and like a brother to me, so very close to his passing I made a film about a young prodigy, a poet, an artistic genius, creative and spiritual human being that passed away too. That’s what was difficult for me. So it’s for different reasons, but that’s the answer to the question.
 

Did the trappings of the Hollywood studio stuff make things easier? We always see how complicated these shoots are.

Jose protects you from all of that I think. He has a lot of control as a director of the films that he makes. He’s a very talented director. The studio was great, producers were great and also too I felt a lot of freedom. I felt like our producers, like Jonathan Glickman, Eric Newman, Marc Abraham and Jose believed in me. They trusted me to do my job, so I didn’t have five people going, “Abbie, you’ve got to do it like this so go here and say this or do that.” They just let me be. It was amazing, and I’m a sort of actor that I’m totally cool with getting directions but if a director doesn’t give me directions, I’m confident enough to go for it, so there was a sort of beautiful thing with Jose where sometimes he would say something, sometimes he wouldn’t. But I loved that feeling of trust I guess you would call it.
 

Would Joel pop in and out of the suit?

Yeah, all the time. He didn’t like to keep it on for a long time. I don’t think it’s the most comfortable thing in the world.
 

But it was flexible enough that he could take it off in between?

I think it was a half hour turnaround. I think it was 15 to get it off and 25 or half an hour to get it back on.
 

But if there was more than an hour setup he could get out of it.

Yeah, he could get out and chill out. Yeah, but he did great. No complaints.
 

Are you involved in any of the film’s action?

Not directly, no.
 

What can we expect from Solace and “Klondike?”

“Klondike” is three part miniseries that Discovery did about the Gold Rush era in Alaska in 1897/1898. It’s all based on real life stories. That’s with Richard Madden from “Game of Thrones.” There’s that, which’ll come out in March I think. Then Solace with Tony Hopkins and Colin Farrell, that one comes out in June/July.
 

Was there any action in that role?

[Nods]
 

How does that sort of real world action compare to what you got to do in Sucker Punch?

It was sick, it was sick. I trained with the FBI. I had an FBI advisor and he also taught me. He taught me everything that you see in the movie and I adore him and all of his input and passion in the project. Yeah, I trained, trained with the FBI, did a lot of research, not only as an FBI agent but also on the topic, on the subject matter. The subject matter is about the FBI who can’t crack the case of a serial killer so they hire Tony Hopkins who’s a psychic for the FBI. So I researched a lot of that.
 

Like a remote viewing kind of psychic?

Well, more like the psychics that I talked to. What I had to do, I had to research from the skeptic all the way to the believer, because my character swings in regards to her skepticism about it and then her belief about it. So basically, Tony Hopkins’ character brings out her belief because he’s real. He’s a real psychic. So I talked to a couple real psychics. I did a lot of research on a lot of dodgy psychics.
 

There was a program called remote viewing where they were trying to train psychics.

It’s crazy. For example, Sylvia Browne was the Cleveland abductions and a mother was told by a psychic that her daughter was dead when she actually was still alive. Famous psychic, so there’s a skeptic story for you. And then this woman that I talked to that works with the Boston FBI, stories she told me sent shivers down my spine. Off the charts, like undeniable. She goes into a crime scene and either becomes the murderer or the victim and then she can see what’s happened.
 

And she told you about those?

She told me stories, yeah. It was hard to get off the phone because it was just so crazy. 

Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.

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