{"id":360517,"date":"2026-01-09T07:56:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T07:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/360517\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T07:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T07:56:11","slug":"primate-director-johannes-roberts-rewrote-a-character-for-oscar-winner-troy-kotsur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/360517\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Primate’ Director Johannes Roberts Rewrote a Character For Oscar Winner Troy Kotsur"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the most suspenseful scenes in director Johannes Roberts<\/a>\u2018 Primate sees a deaf father arrive home, unaware of the vicious animal attack waging in the recesses of his house.<\/p>\n

The character, Adam, as Roberts initially wrote with collaborator Ernest Riera, wasn\u2019t deaf at all. Nor was Adam a character who\u2019s as warm and present a father as Academy Award winner Troy Kotsur portrays him. Roberts reshaped the character entirely when he sought out the actor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked Johannes Roberts, our director, \u2018What made you think of me being involved in this?’\u201d Kotsur tells Bloody Disgusting. \u201cHe saw the film Coda<\/a>, and he started to think about this character of Adam, and that\u2019s what led him to contact me and offer me the role. Then, of course, I\u2019m a big fan of Johannes\u2019 work and all of his previous films, including 47 Meters Down<\/a>. His work was amazing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a big fan, and now this is the first time I\u2019ve been in a horror movie. I\u2019ve never had that experience, and you don\u2019t often see actors who happen to be deaf get that opportunity to act in a horror film.\u201d<\/p>\n

The actor continues, \u201cAnd it\u2019s so nice to be able to give feedback through the process. For example, there were a few scenes on a telephone, and to be authentic to a deaf character, you can adapt it to texting or video calls or FaceTime, or there are different ways to make those small adjustments and to go through that process. But we made them, and they were open-minded, and I\u2019m so grateful for them to be so open-minded. Deanne Bray, my wife, was the ASL consultant who worked with Johnny and the other actors who had to learn sign language dialogue. And it was really magic. It was a great team. It was a great crew, and we couldn\u2019t have done it without the collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Primate doesn\u2019t just mark Kotsur\u2019s first horror role, but for star Johnny Sequoyah as well. Sequoyah plays Adam\u2019s daughter Lucy, the film\u2019s protagonist, tasked with going toe-to-toe with one ferociously pissed off chimp.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That the actress happens to be a huge horror fan meant this was a dream project. Even if a bit challenging. \u201cI had never done horror before,\u201d Sequoyah said. \u201cSo I think honestly, most of it intimidated me just because I had no idea how it was going to work, especially with so much of the script. You can\u2019t really imagine what it\u2019s going to look like when you\u2019re reading it, right? I didn\u2019t even understand how they were going to do the chimp when I was reading it. So it was pretty mind-blowing to get there to set and to see the world that they had created and to see Ben in real life.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like walking onto this magical set. I feel like a lot of the challenges then became actually doing the stuff, like acting in the water for three weeks, running around, and fake falling. And the emotional sides of it. There were so many physical and emotional challenges that were required. It was really satisfying to be able to get an opportunity like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both would love to return to horror again, though Kotsur cites an understandable caveat: \u201cAs long as it\u2019s old school, I like old school and practical effects and that kind of feel. Old school is my thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Primate<\/a> releases in theaters on January 9.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Gia Hunter as \u201cErin\u201d and Johnny Sequoyah as \u201cLucy\u201d in Primate from Paramount Pictures.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the most suspenseful scenes in director Johannes Roberts\u2018 Primate sees a deaf father arrive home, unaware…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[138291,96,35194,137962,2839,35195,35196,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-360517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-animal-attack","tag-entertainment","tag-johannes-roberts","tag-johnny-sequoyah","tag-movies","tag-primate","tag-troy-kotsur","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}