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The Studio scene-stealer Ike Barinholtz is set to star as Elon Musk in Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming film Artificial and gave a brief tease of what appears to be his killer impression of the controversial billionaire at the Emmy Awards. Artificial will detail Sam Altman’s firing and re-hiring at OpenAI, the developers of ChatGPT.
Alongside Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk, Artificial is also set to star Oscar nominees Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman, Monica Barbaro as Mira Murati and Anora breakout Yura Borisov at Ilya Sutskever. Additional cast members also include Cooper Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Chris O’Dowd, Cooper Koch, Billie Lourd, and Mark Rylance.
At the Emmy Awards on Sunday, September 14, Barinholtz — who stars in AppleTV+’s The Studio, which became the most-nominated first-year comedy series in the awards’ history with 23 nominations — showed off a brief glimpse of his Musk impression that blew fans away.
Ike Barinholtz shows off brief tease of his Elon Musk performance in upcoming movie Artificual
“I start my poisoning my brain by watching lots of interviews with him. [Director] Luca Guadagnino is a real genius and brings stuff out of people, so, any trepidation I had going into it was instantly assuaged by that genius,” Barinholtz told Variety on the Emmy’s red carpet.
“They’re definitely going for… in a movie like that, you definitely want to go for an accurate performance, and not kind of like, if I was on MadTV…” the actor explained before launching into a brief but clearly very accurate impression of Elon Musk.
Ike Barinholtz is playing Elon Musk in Luca Guadagnino’s “Artificial.” He has not reached out to Musk and says of the prep process:
“I started poising my brain by watching lot of interviews with him.” #Emmys pic.twitter.com/VUbuofPwnd
— Variety (@Variety) September 14, 2025
His jokey “oh my god it’s so epic” at about 30 seconds in is not only a perfect delivery but he even makes a perfect Elon face. This is going to rule https://t.co/WIBjuRGCw4
— Justin🦩Boldaji (@justinboldaji) September 15, 2025
“I’m okay. Not really,” Barinholtz said of reaching out to Musk for advice on his performance. “He’s famous enough that you get it… All I hope is that if he puts me into a gulag, it’s one with a lot of my friends. That way we can have a party.”
At the Emmy Awards, while Barinholtz did not win for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, Seth Rogen took home the prize for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, while the series itself also won Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series, Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series, and Outstanding Comedy Series.