On the inspirations for the character of David:

"For this, I made a decision not to watch the Alien movies. I watched Blade Runner and I looked at the replicants – well, I looked at Sean Young. There was something in her character, a quality there that I kind of liked for David, the longing for something or some sort of a soul I play there, some vacant elements... I don't know exactly what, I just knew there was a quality there that I liked. And then Hal from 2001.

And then I worked then through with the servant Dirk Bogart in that, and then Lawrence of Arabia, Peter O'Toole's character Lawrence, and The Man Who Fell to Earth with David Bowie. So those were the kind of ingredients, and then Greg Louganis, the diver."

On the 'human' elements of David:

"I played him exactly like you said, an earlier model. And in the earlier versions, where that they were very human and, [the revelation that] 'oh, my God, they're robots,' is idea there, you know. Whereas, this one, the reveal's very early, so I wanted to make him very robotic in the external.

And then, yes, inside of him there's human traits and personality traits, so you're like, wait a sec. Is he just being sarcastic there? Or is he being for real?

So you're always asking that question with the character. So it's, like, as the character develops as well physically - I don't know if it shows, but - like, at the beginning, it sees a very neutral sort of physicality."

David's childlike qualities:

"I thought, you know, as a child as well, everything's fascinating, everything is information for him. So it's like the childlike thing. So when he watches human behave together, he's gathering information. Then I had a yo-yo that I was playing around with, we didn't use that idea, but, there were various sort of things that he would get up to onboard the ship instead."

David's relationship with Peter Weyland:

"Well, it's complicated. I think, obviously, Weyland is high achieving alpha male, you know. And what is cool about the Davids is there's hundreds of thousands of Davids, they're mass produced. And he's, obviously, very, very proud of his creation, but I think that's because he's proud of himself.

It's like it's all about him, Weyland. He's the creator. And so when he goes, the son that I never had, it's not because he has affection for David, it's because he's got such sort of affection for himself and self-affirmation that he created this. And I think it's the classic thing of perhaps neglected daughter, you know, or a neglected child. She's desperately vying to get daddy's attention."

Original Source is here