Who Is the Robot Voice in ‘Finch’? Caleb Landry Jones Shines As A Bumbling AI

While Tom Hanks is basically the only actor you’ll see on screen in Finch—the new post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama now streaming on Apple TV+—there’s one other key performance that makes the movie work. I’m speaking of course, of the voice of the anthropomorphic robot who becomes Hanks’ son/best friend in the movie, Jeff.

The premise of Finch is fairly straightforward. A series of radioactive solar flares have destroyed the ozone layer, turned the sun deadly, and ushered in the apocalypse. Only a few survivors remain, including Finch Weinberg (Hanks), a former engineer/inventor of some sort who has survived by building himself helper robots. Finch’s only goals now are to keep himself alive, and, more importantly, to keep his dog alive.

In order to help with this, Finch builds a more sophisticated robot equipped with artificial intelligence. And it works! It’s alive! But thanks to an impending solar storm, Finch, his dog, and his new robot are forced to go on the run before the robot’s upload is complete. As a result, he’s a goofy, lovable, slightly annoying robot who does things like name himself Jeff. It’s basically like Tom Hanks has a robotic 6-year-old child.

It’s silly but endearing, thanks in large part to the slightly disjointed robotic voice that sounds more and more human as the movie progresses. So who’s the actor behind the metal?

WHO IS THE ROBOT VOICE IN FINCH?

The robot in Finch is voiced by actor Caleb Landry Jones. Though he’s not quite a household name, you’ve almost definitely seen him in something.

Perhaps you know him as the creepy brother in the 2017 horror film Get Out, or as Banshee in 2011’s X-Men: First Class. Jones also earned critical acclaim for his performance as Red Welby in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, as well as for his recent leading role in the 2021 Australian thriller, Nitram.

But as the robot Jeff, the 31-year-old actor is anything but creepy. Rather, he is charmingly naive and hopelessly sweet. In a smart move from director Miguel Sapochnik, the robotic distortion on his voice gradually slips away as Finch and Jeff bond, until, by the movie’s end, he sounds almost entirely human.

And it wasn’t just the voice—Jones actually acted alongside Hanks using a motion-capture suit, which was later converted using CG into his robot.

In a recent press conference for the film, Hanks said, “There’s a couple of scenes that were no different than scenes between two human beings, it’s just that one guy was dressed up like a robot and the other guy was dressed in used clogs — that was me,” Hanks said. “It almost defies description sometimes. When you say ‘guy-dog-robot,’ well, you get a sense of what [the] robot is going to be, but by the time we get into the movie, Jeff, as Caleb has created him, is … a teenager, about to go off and fend for himself. There’s a different kind of story to be told.”

Watch Finch on Apple TV+