Jack Quaid's 'Companion' character is so slimy, he makes you root for his robot girlfriend to kill him

In Companion, Sophie Thatcher plays a woman who’s nervous as she shows up to spend a weekend at a luxurious lake house with her boyfriend and his friends.

That’s enough to set anyone on edge — and a classic horror premise. But what’s soon revealed is that this is no ordinary friend group. Two of the invited members are actually sex robots called companions, including Thatcher’s character, Iris. Her boyfriend’s sinister intentions are quickly revealed, and she must fight the man she’s been programmed to love. 

It’s unusual for a movie to ask its audience to root for a robot over a human when they’re both trying to kill each other, but Companion does. Thatcher told Yahoo Entertainment she was conscious that she was playing a robot the whole time, but she and the other robot character “are the most human in the movie.” 

“She loves [her boyfriend Josh] so deeply, and that love feels real until it all changes and her world is completely thrown apart,” she said. “I see her as human, especially when she starts to gain control of herself.”

Companion is not the only new movie out this weekend that encourages its audience to root for robots. Love Me, which stars Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun, tells the story of two AI beings falling in love. But Companion is no love story — it’s a breakup story.

Another key element in convincing the audience to stay on Iris’s side is to make the human character delightfully hateable. Jack Quaid, who plays Iris’s nerdy but scheming boyfriend, told Yahoo Entertainment that Josh is the “most insecure character I’ve ever played in my life.” 

“I think a lesser movie, given the same subject [matter], would have made Josh the protagonist and had Iris going on a rampage so Josh has to stop her,” he explained. “But I love that Josh is the antagonist because he’s a selfish dick.” 

Josh is the quintessential nice guy — the type that we in the real world often see posting complaints online about how he can never get a woman because they don’t appreciate his kindness. He turns to a robot for love, but instead of truly being kind, he takes advantage of her devotion to get the attention of another woman.

“I think the real challenge for me was that [Josh is] the antagonist of the story, but I don’t think he knows that he’s the bad guy,” Quaid said. “Like, in his head, he’s the hero. He’s John Cusack in the ’80s … he’s a person who has rarely heard the words ‘I love you,’ and I think that makes him do pretty despicable things. 

“Now that I’m not playing him, I can say, ‘Screw Josh!’ That’s very nice to say. I’m finally free,” he added. 

Quaid is currently in a unique position. If you go see a movie in theaters right now, it’s possible you’ll see him in two trailers — for Companion and the upcoming Novocaine. He said he was forced to watch himself in both while seeing Nosferatu. 

“I went with a friend, and I was like, ‘We need to talk right now. And you need to talk really loud,’” he said. “After the trailer plays — when you can hear people being like, ‘That looks pretty good!’ — I didn’t want to hear that. I didn’t want to hear someone go, ‘Oh, he’s in two things?’” 

Quaid doesn’t feel like an action star either. Novocaine is a “gnarly” movie about a guy with a genetic disorder that makes him unable to feel pain.

“It’s less me doing the hits and more taking them,” he said. “It’s very fun, but also very me. Like, what if I was an action star?” 

Quaid and Thatcher currently star in the beloved TV shows The Boys and Yellowjackets, respectively. The other actors who round out Josh’s friend group in Companion are also perhaps best known for their roles on television shows like Never Have I Ever, The White Lotus and What We Do in the Shadows. 

Megan Suri plays the only human woman in the film. At first, she’s completely unlikable — but it’s just because she’s pretending to be someone she’s not to appease her boyfriend, mirroring Iris in the process. 

“This was a very big departure from playing a teenager [like I did in Never Have I Ever],” she told Yahoo Entertainment. “I think we like her more when we see more of who she really is … when she’s leaning into calling Josh out on his crap.” 

Lukas Gage, who plays another one of Josh’s friends and recently terrified audiences in Smile 2, has become a bit of a horror expert himself. He told Yahoo Entertainment that “Companion does a good job of blending all the genres together.” 

“It has a little bit of everything. I think that the payoff for the horror, thriller and sci-fi moments are in perfect conjunction with the romance, comedy, lightness and humanity of the movie,” he said. “I think Drew Hancock, our director, just nailed it. And this beautiful cast — I mean, come on. It couldn’t get better than this.” 

“You can keep talking, actually,” Harvey Guillén chimed in. 

Guillén plays Eli, Gage’s character’s boyfriend. After playing the long-suffering assistant for six seasons on What We Do in the Shadows, he said he wanted to lean into the sexiness of this new character. 

“I want to do a rom-com where I’m the lead sexy guy who finds the love of his life,” he told Yahoo Entertainment. 

“We should do it. Let’s do it,” Gage interjected. 

“We’ll be right back,” Guillén joked. 

He said he loves seeing actors show off how they can do more than just play the characters we’ve known them for. 

Companion is now in theaters.