Abstract: In this paper, we investigated how the choice of a Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ) interface affects communication with a robot from both the user’s and the wizard’s perspective. In a conversational setting, we used three WoZ interfaces with varying levels of dialogue input and output restrictions: a) prototypical Restricted GUI with TTS dialogue feedback and fixed-view video as input and pre-scripted robot’s utterances and gestures as output; b) Unrestricted GUI with an additional real-time audio input c) VR telepresence interface with real-time audio and immersive video input and spontaneous user-generated verbal and non-verbal output. We found that the interaction mediated by the VR interface was by far most preferred by the users in terms of robot’s features and perceived social presence. For the wizards, the VR condition turned out to be the most demanding but elicited higher social connection with the users. VR interface also induced the most connected interaction in terms of inter-speaker gaps and overlaps, while Restricted GUI induced the least connected flow and the largest silence. Given these results, we argue that WoZ studies using telepresence interfaces offer a promising path to automation based on naturalistic contextualized verbal and non-verbal behavioral data.