The Walking Dead star and noted celebrity impressionist Ross Marquand transforms into 11 celebrities in a Deepfake video that repurposes Marquand’s impressions from a 2016 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Tweeting out the video created by VillainGuy on YouTube, Marquand called the “masterful” Deepfake “scary & amazing.”
So, a few years ago I appeared on @jimmykimmel and performed several #impressions for #Oscars season and someone did a masterful #deepfake of it. The internet is a scary & amazing place, folks… #BlackMirror https://t.co/Xhvs6gqICz
— Ross Marquand (@RossMarquand) June 20, 2019
Described by digital forensics expert and professor Hany Farid as “[artificial intelligence]-synthesized fakes” generated by computers, Deepfakes involve computers doing “the hard work of what humans used to do,” Farid told CNN.
Like in the above video, the faces of Marquand’s celebrity targets — Kevin Spacey, Justin Timberlake and Matthew McConaughey among them — are superimposed over Marquand’s own face and impressions, taking his celebrity parodies to the next level.
Marquand’s many celebrity impressions include Christopher Walken, Al Pacino and Liam Neeson, but audiences won’t catch Marquand impersonating his Walking Dead co-stars.
“It’s kind of a policy of mine not to do people that I work with, because you never know how it could backfire,” Marquand said at San Jose Fan Fest in December.
“It backfired on me a few years ago with a very famous actor, and they were like, ‘That’s not what I sound like.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna go home and die now.’”
Marquand has performed impressions of Walking Dead stars Andrew Lincoln and Norman Reedus — the latter being “maybe one of my favorite impressions of all time,” Marquand admitted — but Marquand declines to perform those impressions publicly “out of respect” for his co-stars.
“Norman’s asked me to do impressions of him several times, but I always tell him, ‘nah, nah,’ because you never know how [someone will react] — we work together every day, I don’t want to piss him off,” Marquand said.
“Once I’m done with the show, if I’m killed off or whatever, then I will definitely do it.”
Marquand and Reedus return in The Walking Dead Season 10, due out this October on AMC.