{"id":535933,"date":"2026-03-21T02:55:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T02:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/535933\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T02:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T02:55:08","slug":"how-project-hail-mary-rocky-puppeteer-brought-the-alien-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/535933\/","title":{"rendered":"How ‘Project Hail Mary’ Rocky Puppeteer Brought the Alien to Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen Ryan Gosling<\/a> interacts on screen with his alien buddy, which he does for more than half of \u201cProject Hail Mary<\/a>,\u201d he wasn\u2019t staring at a green screen as cameras rolled. Instead, he was playing off of an elaborate puppet manned by James Ortiz<\/a>, a New York theater staple best known for bringing cows, mammoths and dinosaurs to life in Broadway shows like \u201cThe Skin of Their Teeth\u201d and \u201cInto the Woods.\u201d In fact, Ortiz was on set for nearly all of the film\u2019s six-month shoot in London, because directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller wanted to use practical, instead of digital, effects as much as possible.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cActor to actor, I didn\u2019t want Ryan to ever feel like he was alone in this,\u201d Ortiz says. \u201cIt would be too hard. I mean, he shouldn\u2019t have to make character decisions for a strange, faceless creature.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe two men rehearsed each scene before bringing out the puppet so they could get the blocking nailed down. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat would be our one chance to check in with each other, see each other\u2019s eyes, and sort of figure out the beats,\u201d Ortiz says. \u201cThen we\u2019d layer the puppet in.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tOrtiz, lanky, with his hair swept up into a pompadour and glasses that make him seem like a Soho gallery owner, is telling me all this as we search for a quiet place to chat at Film at Lincoln Center, an arthouse cinema steps away from where Ortiz worked on \u201cThe Skin of Their Teeth.\u201d It\u2019s harder than you\u2019d think. The caf\u00e9 we tried first was cacophonous, filled with lunch-goers and blaring music. Then we huddled in a lecture hall, but got kicked out when a tour group came through. Finally, we sit on the floor just outside of a theater playing \u201cSir\u0101t,\u201d a Spanish thriller with an electronic score that punctuates our discussion with synth sounds. Ortiz is wearing a \u201cBatman Forever\u201d crew sweatshirt, a wrap gift from Gosling.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe would have lunch on set and because we\u2019re two boys of a certain age, we would talk about Batman,\u201d says Ortiz. \u201cYou don\u2019t have enough print for me to describe how much I love \u2018Batman Forever,\u2019 but it got brought up frequently. On my last day, I get a call to go over to the director\u2019s tent, and Ryan intercepts me with this package. I couldn\u2019t believe it. The gift just speaks to Ryan\u2019s generosity and the fact that the man really listens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tRocky, a spider-like creature who speaks in whale songs and has the physiognomy of a boulder, arrives after the first third of \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d to help Gosling\u2019s school teacher figure out a way to save earth from an environmental disaster. Despite his unconventional appearance, Rocky is sure to be the breakout star of \u201cProject Hail Mary,\u201d and Ortiz is partly responsible for making him so irresistible. Along with the designer Neil Scanlan, he had to figure out a way to make a creature who lacks a face or the usual means of expression, somehow relatable.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRocky is super intelligent and has a mind like a computer \u2014 you never have to say anything twice to him,\u201d Ortiz explains. \u201cHe\u2019s a brilliant engineer. But his soul, to me, always felt like that of a little brother. There\u2019s a little bit of this anxious, 14-year-old boy who really wants to be invited to the party.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tScanlan, who worked for Jim Henson\u2019s creature shop and on \u201cStar Wars,\u201d made it clear that even though he had built Rocky, Ortiz should feel free to make the character his own, telling him, \u201cI\u2019m going to treat this like you\u2019re Frank Oz, and my job is to build Yoda for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTo make sure he was comfortable with the puppet, Ortiz spent months in pre-production giving feedback on how the creature should be constructed so he and his team of puppeteers could operate it more fluidly. The \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d crew also designed the set to accommodate Ortiz and his colleagues, making sure that everything was built four or five feet off of the soundstage floor, so that they could cut a hole in the floor when needed. For certain sequences, the production relied on a fully animatronic Rocky, and in more complicated shots, VFX firm Framestore was relied on for the CGI.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs you can imagine, puppeteering rolling in a ball through a ship would be pretty impossible to pull off,\u201d Ortiz says. \u201cThat\u2019s where digital effects come into play.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough Rocky doesn\u2019t speak our language, the film has Gosling\u2019s character create a machine translation system so the two can communicate. On set, Ortiz would recite Rocky\u2019s dialogue from a sound booth so Gosling could have a scene partner. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRocky\u2019s voice comes out of a series of computers that have been sort of duct-taped together, so I though it probably shouldn\u2019t sound great,\u201d Ortiz says. \u201cI thought it shouldn\u2019t sound like the top AI you ever heard. There should be a little bit of Mr. Moviefone and a little bit of Siri, only not as clean.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUltimately, Ortiz thought that Lord and Miller would choose a higher profile actor to re-record the dialogue in post-production. But as the directors screened the film, they used Ortiz\u2019s tracks and felt it couldn\u2019t be improved upon. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGetting that call was incredible,\u201d Ortiz says. \u201cI\u2019d convinced myself it wouldn\u2019t be me.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThough the production was filled with technical challenges, Ortiz says that Lord and Miller made a point of making him feel like part of an ensemble. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat I loved about the process was at no point did Phil or Chris or anybody on the team ever treat me like I was a technician, or like a plumber who was brought in to fix a specific thing,\u201d Ortiz says. \u201cAt every point they would ask, \u2018what do you think, would Rocky do this or that?\u2019 And I\u2019d think about it and tell them how exactly how Rocky would feel.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Ryan Gosling interacts on screen with his alien buddy, which he does for more than half of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,240384,206,155909,14069],"class_list":["post-535933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-james-ortiz","tag-movies","tag-project-hail-mary","tag-ryan-gosling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}