Eline Van der Velden, a Dutch comedian, was living in Los Angeles in 2012 and going out for auditions. After being told once too often that she needed to lose weight, she created “Miss Holland,” a buffoonish character meant to mock unattainable beauty standards.
Conceived as a female version of Borat, the character won her an online comedy award and landed her on BBC Three, where she used her improv training and hidden camera videos to conduct street experiments on unsuspecting Britons in the name of social commentary.
“You learn to just not care too much about what everybody is saying and thinking all the time because you just have to do your job,” she told the Times of London. “You learn to get over a lot of shame.”
All of that was mere prelude to Tilly Norwood, the doe-eyed actress introduced by Van der Velden and her team in July. The two-minute intro video poked gentle fun at British TV, gender politics, and artificial intelligence — and was made entirely with AI.
“Yes, it’s satire,” Van der Velden wrote on Instagram. “Yes, it’s disturbingly close to reality.”
The backlash didn’t hit until two months later, when Van der Velden suggested on a panel in Zurich that “Tilly” would be signing with an agency. She was not, evidently, joking. Nor, she says, was she trying to whip up controversy to promote her AI company, Particle 6.
In an interview with Variety, she notes that other digital characters have had agents.
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“I didn’t think it was controversial,” she says.
The performers’ union, SAG-AFTRA, disagreed, denouncing her for “devaluing human artistry” and threatening actors’ jobs. Van der Velden — either sincerely or at a level of satire approaching the Swiftian — countered that no one’s job was impacted and that Tilly Norwood required a lot of human artistry, just of a different kind.
“As a creative, I have really enjoyed creating her,” she says. “It’s been just like a writer creating characters. You fall in love with your characters when you’re writing them. It’s a wonderful process. It wasn’t like I just made her in a second, and that was it. You know, it took a long time.”
In the interview, Van der Velden discusses the furor from her perspective and offers her take on the future of AI filmmaking.
Have you ever experienced anything like this before, in terms of the attention and backlash?
No, I would say that’s the first for me. I like to spark a conversation, and I’m not shy of controversy. But this was another level.
In your statement on Instagram, you said your work has always been about holding up a mirror to society. It seems like often these AI conversations end up being more about the person’s reaction to it than about the thing itself. It’s this X-ray of everyone’s anxieties. Is that what you meant?
I’m always questioning what should we be doing as a society, right? Miss Holland was definitely that, and my new characters will do the same thing, and even the fact that I’m thinking, “Where is our world gonna go?” I think Tilly did a great thing in sparking that conversation. I very much want this creative renaissance to come from the creative industries. We need to take control of it as opposed to it being imposed by the tech industry. There are going to be AI actresses, right? That’s a given. Tilly’s not the first. Tilly’s not taking anyone’s job. She’s created jobs actually. And there’s a lot of humanity and people behind her that people forget about. It has clearly hit a nerve. This visceral reaction that people have to her is part of why I created her — because that’s where the world’s going, right? That’s why I’m saying it’s a piece of art. It is us at this moment in time — where we are and how people are feeling.
It feels like there’s a couple of paths on AI. And one is post-production, pre-production, using it for mood boards, that kind of thing. And the other is an AI-generated film. Are you pursuing both of those?
We have experimented and learned and become experts at these tools. And we thought, “OK how can people use this? Is it just going to be a little bit of pre-viz or a couple of scenes?” And those are the great baby steps that we tell everyone is the place to start — do a little test scene. But now we’re getting to the point where we can start delivering full AI feature films. So that will be where we’re going next.
In terms of an AI film, the SAG-AFTRA response is that there’s no evidence that people actually want to watch this stuff. And I guess the proof will be in the pudding on that. Somebody’s gonna have to create something that somebody wants to pay money to see, right? And then it will be inarguable.
I think it will be a slow progression. I’m sure in the coming year, there’ll be plenty of effects that will be made with AI. There’ll be some establishing shots, there’ll be some second-unit shots with AI, and then slowly, we’ll progress to a full AI film. And whether people will pay for an AI film or not — I don’t think they’ll know the difference. It’s good storytelling that will be the reason why people will pay for it or not.
Where does your revenue come from? Is it commercials?
Particle 6 is very much about helping traditional filmmakers make stuff for less and make it higher quality for less. So we are doing commercials, absolutely, because there are less boundaries around that. We are allowed to make commercials with AI. We might label them in some instances. This past year, we have been working with lots of studios, production companies, independents. Say they have a great film, but they’ve only raised 60% of the budget, and they’re worried they’re not going to be able to make their film. We go, “Right, well, let’s make a few scenes with AI. Let’s do a test project.” We do that test project with them, which is like a minute or two minutes. And they go, “Oh, wow, this can actually work.” And then we go into full production with them, helping on more scenes. And then there is our own creative pursuits. We’ve been making shows for the BBC, for Sky, all these big channels in the U.K. for the past 10 years now. Some, going forward, we’ll be making with AI. So we’re pitching ideas. For example, Sky History is a great new commission we got. That show will come out in December. That’s a hybrid show with a real presenter and with AI.
There was something on Channel 4 recently where it was like, “This whole show has been about AI and in fact, I am an AI-generated character.”
Yeah, they did the AI presenter. Now the difference is you can do AI well and you can do AI less well. And that’s really where we want to be the premium brand to make premium AI content with.
In the AI space, and certainly in the marketing of it, there’s sort of a leaning into the backlash. Are you familiar with Friend? It’s a little dongle that is supposed to be your AI friend, and you can talk to it and it talks back to you. And there’s subway ads for it. People are so mad about this. But ultimately it’s effective marketing, because people are at least talking about it.
I don’t know. I really wasn’t expecting [the backlash]. I’m in a AI bubble, right? I didn’t quite realize how far removed people are from this tech. I am living in a different future. I’m dealing with these tools every day and these people don’t even know that you can do it in the click of a button. In the U.K., the reaction was completely not like it was in the U.S. This backlash thing didn’t exist in the U.K., because people understand that we’re using it as a force for good, and that we’re trying to get more projects, more stories told which otherwise wouldn’t get told in the U.K. We’re an ethical production company. We’re trying to do the right thing with the AI tools.
Michelle Waldron, publicist: To your point about putting stuff out for marketing purposes. Even before Tilly, Eline was out there talking to the great and the good who knew what she was doing in AI and wanted to learn. We’ve had a massive influx from very big names, production companies, directors, other creators with projects that they want to work together with Eline and the team on. There’s a big reservoir of projects being discussed in development. None are yet ready to be announced. Eline’s under hundreds of NDAs. But there is genuine business that we will be announcing over the coming months with very high-profile names. So this isn’t a marketing thing. Tilly wasn’t a stunt or an exercise. It’s part of a business strategy that is delivering in spades.
Van der Velden: It’s funny how everyone thought it was a stunt at one point.
Via Particle 6
I think people were reacting to the idea that she’s a person and that she has agency as opposed to being a synthetic character. I think that’s what people were freaking out about — the way it was presented.
That is my idea for Tilly, right? It’s not to build a hollow image. Just like any character in a drama or a TV series, you would create their full character, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t just leave them as an empty shell. So we are building a whole personality and her backstory and her brain. And that’s a creative pursuit. It’s fascinating — to build the full character of her.
I think it was the signing with an agent piece where it’s like — you know it’s not a person, right? It can’t sign a contract.
If you’re creating a person and a personality, you would want there to be someone to manage all the influx — we have a lot of projects now, and then branded opportunities. We still are talking to a lot of them. But somebody who really understands that digital space is what we want.
Not to diminish, but anybody can create their own AI characters, right? Any studio that wanted to could do what you’re doing.
This is the thing. A lot of people try. But to create someone resonant is a very different thing — and to make them look that good. So I encourage everybody to try all these tools. And then once they start working with these tools, they go, “Oh, this is quite hard.” And then they need an expert team to work on their film or their character. And that’s when they come to us.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
From Variety US