Project Hail Mary: Rocky Actor Interview

It’s been an out-of-this-world past few years for James Ortiz, the New York theater artist and puppeteer behind Rocky, the lovable alien at the center of Project Hail Mary.

Ortiz spent months on a London set working opposite Ryan Gosling, providing the voice and overseeing the puppetry for the rock-like alien, who is on a mission to save his home planet’s star when he meets Gosling’s Ryland Grace, who is on his own mission to save the Earth’s Sun.

The friendship between the two is the heart of the movie, which has passed $322 million globally, making it the biggest hit of the year to date.

Despite Hail Mary being a $190 million production with action and spectacle, filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller asked Ortiz and Gosling to improvise long takes, almost like it was a theater production.

“Sometimes, it was 45-minute takes of just us playing stuff,” Ortiz says.

Ortiz landed the role after a chemistry read with Gosling in Los Angeles, in which he was given a puppet to work with. But at the last minute, he asked to use his own, smaller puppet he’d brought with him for the audition, as he felt he could better deliver what they needed.

“Later, Phil and Chris said it felt very Rocky for him to kind of be so bossy,” Ortiz says with a laugh.

Gosling has been an A-list star for twenty years and was coming off his Oscar-nominated role in Barbie. But despite the star wattage, he quickly put Ortiz at ease.

“Ryan has a really arresting quality of really looking you in the eyes and really talking to you,” he says.

The two had an early phone call after Ortiz landed the part, where he promised that despite the challenges of puppetry, he would over-prepare so that when the cameras were rolling, they could play and not be hindered by the technical details.

“I said, ‘I want us to improvise, I want us to make each other laugh, let’s have as much fun as possible,’” recalls Ortiz. Gosling was game.

Ortiz worked with special effects artist Neal Scanlan to build Rocky and held auditions to find other puppeteers to help him operate the five-limbed puppet. (He appropriately dubbed these collaborators the Rockets.)

After six weeks of preparing in London, Ortiz arrived for his first day of filming. Emma Thompson happened to be on set to visit Lord and Miller, producers of her upcoming movie The Sheep Detectives. No pressure, it’s only a two-time Oscar winner watching your first day on a movie set.

“I felt like I was sort of patting my head and rubbing my belly every day,” Ortiz says with a laugh.

That day, they shot a scene that didn’t make it into the movie, in which Gosling’s Grace is attempting to get some sleep on his ship.

“Rocky just can’t stop talking to him. And Ryan tries to explain what dreams are to Rocky, and it’s such a sweet moment,” says Ortiz, who imagines it will make its way to the deleted scenes for home entertainment.

The days were so mentally exhausting that he often would go to bed when he wrapped, though he’d spend his days off exploring London. After six months abroad, his time on the project ended and he returned to New York.

The initial idea was that Rocky’s voice would later be replaced with another, more famous actor. But after principal photography wrapped, Lord and Miller kept sending Ortiz requests to record additional lines of dialogue for test screenings.

“And then finally, I just got a text from Chris who just basically said, ‘We really want to do this with you. Why don’t we formally talk about it? Let’s get you into an ADR booth so we can clean up all of these random clips from both your phone,” recalls Ortiz.

Says Miller: “The idea of hiring an actor to come and imitate what really happened on set and the little nuances that were happening seemed like a crazy proposition. He did such a good job and he really was Rocky. That really became a no-brainer.”

Adds Lord: “In animation, you say ‘you never trace a drawing.’ It’s like it loses its life — that moment when it gets created is the thing you want to capture.”

Ultimately, about half of what you see in the movie is the puppet, and half is animation for moments the puppet couldn’t perform (such as Rocky rolling around in his hamster-style ball, with Framestore providing the animation.)

Ortiz has seen the movie four times in theaters with audiences, including renting out a theater for friends.

“They were basically going, ‘James, that’s you. Because Rocky maybe aren’t that different at the end of the day,” he says.

It’s possible that Rocky could live on. Hail Mary author Andy Weir is toying with sequel ideas, and multiple sources have told THR a sequel movie is not out of the question.

But for now, Ortiz lives on with the memory of one of his final scenes on set — when Rocky and Grace say goodbye.

“The farewell scene is very much just Ryan and I trying stuff,” says Ortiz.

By this point, Gosling and Ortiz had accumulated many moments together that they could call back to, such as when Rocky was unable to discern between a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

But there was something the team had wanted to try but never found the right spot for.

“There was a design on Rocky’s inner forearm that we hadn’t used yet. Phil and Chris had designed all of these tattoos and carvings all over them that meant different things,” says Ortiz. When Rocky grazed one of them with a leg, it would make a musical sound.

On one of the very last takes of the day, Miller suggested saying goodbye using that. It worked, and Sandra Hüller’s Eva Stratt even imitates it back on Earth later in the movie.

“I can’t imagine doing it another way,” Miller says of working with Ortiz. “Ryan always had a scene partner and had someone to talk to and react to. There were all these happy accidents that happened along the way.”