One of the best parts of the SAG Awards — which luckily they kept for their first iteration as the Actor Awards — is the opening where a handful of actors speak directly to the camera with an anecdote of their early, unglamorous start. And everyone ends their moment with, “I’m so-and-so, and I’m an actor.” Sinners star Delroy Lindo delivered one of the intros this year, and not gonna lie, he had me bawling. He is 73 years old and only just now getting the biggest flowers yet of his career. What got me was the way Lindo acknowledged that his career hasn’t always gone well, but he was just as much an actor during the low times as he is now during this moment of success. Then he finished with, “I am Delroy Lindo, I’m an actor and never forget, all you aspiring thespians, you are too.”

So it definitely felt like whiplash to go from the beautiful humanity of that moment Sunday night, to this inhumane, affront to the art of acting news that AI “actress” Tilly Norwood has signed former Amazon Prime executive Mark Whelan to spearhead the expansion of “her” career. From Deadline:

Whelan has been brought in to work on the “rapid expansion of AI actor Tilly Norwood and the launch of the Tillyverse, a dynamic, constantly evolving digital universe where Tilly and a new generation of AI characters will live, collaborate and build careers.” He will also lead the team in the development of new proprietary AI characters for us by Xicoia and its umbrella studio Particle6, as well as oversee the creation of bespoke AI talent commissioned by third parties.

Whelan led Prime Video social expansion across numerous territories and spent six years shaping EU-wide social strategy for the likes of The Grand Tour and Clarkson’s Farm. During his tenure, he led on YouTube formats — one of which, De Knop, evolved into an Amazon original.

Alongside Eline van der Velden, who runs Xicoia and Particle6, Whelan’s focus will be the Tillyverse. Norwood is Xicoia’s controversial AI actor creation, which has attracted the ire of big Hollywood stars and unions. Speaking exclusively to Deadline last year, van der Velden stressed AI actors will never replace real actors as she said the team plan to create 40 diverse characters in the AI actor world, which Whelan is now working across.

Van der Velden said she and Whelan will “together, build something entirely new.” “Tilly Norwood isn’t just an AI character — she’s a personality, a brand, and a future global superstar with a compelling narrative arc,” he added. “Mark will help us craft and shape every layer of her world, from her humour, daily life and career choices to how she interacts with fans across various platforms. It all promises to be bold, playful, a little chaotic — and impossible to ignore.”

Whelan added: “Becoming a lead architect of the Tillyverse is genuinely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. AI is evolving at breathtaking speed, and combining cutting-edge tech with ambitious creative thinking means we’re not following an industry playbook at Xicoia — we are writing it. Tilly already has the momentum, an audience and the cultural spark. Now we’re writing her story and building her universe. It’s a huge responsibility — but an incredibly exciting one. I think the world is going to have a lot of fun watching what happens next.”

[From Deadline]

The “Tillyverse”?? The TILLYverse?! Who else feels unspeakably filthy and like they need an emergency lye bath every time they hear the repugnant term, the tillyverse? Pray tell, does the work under Whelan’s new remit include adding a consistent sense of gravity to this horrid ‘verse, a quality so far lacking in any Tilly imagery thus far? Or perhaps, a refresher course in the Renaissance-era technology of chiaroscuro by which 3D subjects are convincingly rendered in 2D? (Anyone who’s seen Tilly supposedly holding a coffee cup knows what I mean.) But Tilly can’t stand on her own without Eline van der Velden, the former actor who AI-generated Tilly into fake existence. I mean hell, Tilly can’t stand at all, Tilly isn’t real! So Van der Velden must answer why she wants to build a whole universe around a teenage-looking rendering of a human (and then depict that rendering dancing around in her underwear), as opposed to investing in an actual human. Or why Van der Velden thinks anyone associated with vile Jeremy Clarkson is the appropriate steward of this project. But Van der Velden’s attempts at explaining Tilly have so far been, well, inexplicable. All I can say is, Van der Velden’s line that Tilly will be “impossible to ignore” had my blood boiling. If that’s a dare, you’re on.

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A post shared by Tilly Norwood (@tillynorwood)

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A post shared by Tilly Norwood (@tillynorwood)

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