Imaginary Worlds - Puppeteering Project Hail Mary

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

When I interviewed Andy Weir in 2021 about his novel Project Hail Mary, he told me that the movie adaptation was already being planned starring Ryan Gosling. The big question was how would they bring the alien character of Rocky to life. Would they use CGI or practical effects? Now that the film is in theaters, we have the answer. While there is some use of digital effects, Rocky is mostly performed by the puppeteer James Ortiz. James has a deep background in theater but he had never worked on a film before, let alone a sci-fi blockbuster. I talked with James about the delicate balance of operating an incredibly sophisticated five-legged puppet while giving Rocky a distinct personality and building a rapport with Ryan Gosling, who relies heavily on improvisation.   This episode is sponsored by IngramSpark and Audible.   Get 15% off your first order of 15 more books at IngramSpark using the code IMAGINARY15. This offer expires at the end of the year. Listen to the audiobook of Project Hail Mary at Audible.com/hailmary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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In 2021, I interviewed Andy Weir about his novel Project Hail Mary. At that point, Weir was best known for running the Martian, which is about an astronaut who gets stuck on Mars and has to figure out how to survive. Project Hail Mary is also about survival in space. When the story begins, a guy named Rylan Grace wakes up on a spaceship. He's light years from Earth. The rest of his crew is dead. and he has amnesia. He eventually remembers that he's on a mission to save the Earth,

but he doesn't remember why he was chosen. He was not an astronaut. He was a middle school science teacher. When I did my episode about the book five years ago, the publisher didn't want me to give away a big twist without a huge spoiler alert. The twist is that Rylan Grace comes across a friendly alien in another spaceship. Why did I just tell you that without saying spoiler alert?

Because the movie version came out last week. It stars Ryan Gosling. And his friendship with the alien character has been a big part of the ad campaign. I mean, it was even in the Super Bowl trailer. I'm Grace. I'm going to call you Rocky. We're here for the same reason. His son is dying too.

We're going to save our planets. We have to learn how to communicate. Check this out. Grace calls the alien Rocky because it looks like a five-legged spider made of rocks. And Rocky's about the size of a large dog. It takes a while for them to figure out how to communicate. Eventually, Grace uses text-to-speech software so Rocky can have a human voice. But after a while, the novelty wears off.

In one scene, Grace is recording logs to send back to Earth, and he's complaining about his new crewmate. He has incredible hearing. He can see through walls. Personal space is at a premium. Who is Grace talking to? Question. There's no way you can hear me right now. Can hear. Who are you talking to? You can hear this. Yes, Grace say you can hear this. When I interviewed Andy Weir in 2021, he told me the movie rights had already been sold. Chris Miller and Phil Lord were going to direct. Lord and Miller were best known for directing animated films like the Lego movie and Into the Spider-Verse. So I was very curious what they were going to do with Rocky.

In previous episodes, I've talked about how much I love practical effects. A lot of CG characters look fake to me. The computer animation sometimes is cartoon-y, but then the characters are rendered with hyper-realistic textures to the point where they don't blend in with the live-action world around them. So I was very pleased when I found out that Rocky was going to be created mostly through practical effects. They hired a puppeteer named James Ortiz. He also does the voice of Rocky.

James has a long resume in theater, but this was his first film. Isn't that crazy? What a weird, funny surprise. Another surprise was that working on Project Hail Mary felt liberating compared to the work that James had done in theater. Hail Mary was the first time in my career where 100% of me was invited to every day of work. From an acting perspective, from an improvisational perspective, from a puppetry background, from a theater background, I mean, we were doing theatrical puppetry on camera. We were not doing like movie magic.

It was really old-fashioned, old stuff that I think makes a difference and ended up being really tangible in the film. And this opportunity came out of the blue. Literally, I got a phone call from Jeannie McCarthy, the casting director, who knew me from other things, and literally said, hey, are you available on these dates? They're looking for an actor that can puppeteer, not the other way around. They want it to be practical. I read the script, and I was like, this feels like a CGI part. I don't, like, do they mean that? Like, is it really going to actually be a tennis ball and a stick?

One thing led to another, there was a series of auditions. At some point, someone in casting was like, hey, do you have a five-legged alien puppet you could bring in? I was like, um, no. Wait, wait, did you just like whip up something really quickly? So for the audition, it was basically like a collection of foam and things and sort of bits of tape and a quick paint job just to kind of make it look like something. I basically, like thing from the Adams family used my hand as Rocky. So the five fingers were my, were his five legs. And I kind of just made sort of like a fancy glove with some expressivity in his carapace, his central body.

because I realized even then it was like the carapace is going to be the place where we imprint on. We had to figure him out from there. And there was a lot of body language stuff. And interestingly enough, in that first audition was the question that would kind of be the theme of a lot of his movement.

I don't know if people are even noticing that. Yeah, that the tapping he does where he says like question and then like taps his digits. Just, you know, with a character like that, no face, no discernible way of communicating, you do have to start. thinking very carefully about how you're going to animate this guy. And that was sort of what the audition sort of turned into was basically I walked into

this chemistry read and it was like, oh, hello, Ryan Gosling and Amy Pascal's sitting in the back and Adithia Sude and Phil and Chris and all the casting people and you just kind of go, okay. So Amy Pascal producer, the other producer as well. Yeah, head producer of the film. Yeah. And they had provided a puppet for me for the audition that was very kind of them, but it was this, it was like an ottoman. It was this huge, you know, I have only have two hands. I was like,

um, this is really nice. Thank you so much for bringing this. But I kind of like a like a perfect little teacher's pet. I was like, I brought my own and I had already rehearsed with it. So, so like afterwards did Ryan Gosling say, oh, you know, the other Rockies that we auditioned, it wasn't the same. There's this thing you did a little bit. I mean, not not really. I mean, what was amazing is, you know, I got the job that afternoon. Oh, wow. I got a phone call like a hours after that. Everybody was calling. I got a text from Amy and then I got this unknown number and I picked it up and they just hear, hi, it's Ryan. I had a lot of fun playing. I get those calls from all the time. Yeah. Oh, hi. And you just kind of swallow big and figure it out. But, you know,

it's interesting because we talked about a bunch of different things and he was really, you know, one of the first things he said was, I'm just so glad I'm not going to be alone in this thing. And that meant so much to me. And I did shortly after that say to him, listen, you know, puppetry can be really technical and he has five legs and I only have two hands, which means I'm going to have to have other puppeteers help me and it's going to, it's going to be a slow moving thing, but I promise you, I promise you between action and cut, this can be improvisational, this can be playful,

this does not have to be, you know, can you imagine like if we had prepared this thing that was perfect and done and then went, okay, now you're performing to this click track. Like Ryan is so present and interactive and he just, wants to connect with whoever he's acting with. They can send him anything and he'll engage with it. So quickly the job turned into that. It was this balance between the extraordinarily technical and the vulnerable improvisation between action cut. Yeah, because I mean, I've talked about that too, how acting, I mean, actors have often said acting is reacting. And that's why it's so hard to be given like a tennis ball on a stick and just say, this is your best friend. And also for me,

I wanted to play the part on set. My job was to help Ryan, but also to help the entire production understand who Rocky was, where Rocky was, where Rocky was emotionally in any given moment. So I kind of just needed

to always have a really firm grasp on all of it. And in a funny way, almost operatically play him on set. It had to be a little bit larger to telephone into this faceless character. I was going to ask you about that because I mean,

often when theater actors go to film, They say, well, you know, you have to bring everything down. You have to be much more subtle. But, you know, and for you, you've obviously puppeteered entirely in theater. Did you have to be more subtle on film? Yes and no. You know, after our first day of shooting, Phil kind of brought me into his tent and showed me the takes. And me and my team were so excited.

He was like, listen, remember this is going to be on IMAX. We do need to. I was quite busy in those first couple scenes. You know, that was probably out of my own anxiety that if I keep him still, he dies. And in fact, that was true, but there was a middle ground that we had to sort of figure out together. Because, you know, basically for any of the theater fans that are listening, I approached Rocky very much like a neutral mask exercise, which is something out of the school of clown. And basically is a technique in which you learn how to use your body and not your face as a performer.

So you basically put on this thing that eliminates your facial features and you have to stand there and make me silently understand, oh, he's looking at a mountain. It's all sort of communicating emotion and communicating location just by how you're standing. James arrived on set, thinking he had the background to make this puppet work, and then reality and practicality set in. The story of how they made Rocky appear to move and think and feel on his own ended up being so technically challenging but also emotionally rewarding. When Andy Weir began his career, he had to self-publish the Martian.

It went viral and became a best-selling novel. I know many of my listeners are self-published authors of science fiction and fantasy. And if that's you, I'm sure you've also wondered, what is the best platform to publish your work now that you've poured your heart and soul into it? Ingram Spark is an award-winning publishing platform that provides everything you need to successfully self-publish. They make it free to publish. publish and edit your book as needed. That means you can focus on what you do best, writing your story while they make it possible for you to share your book with millions of readers.

When you self-published with Ingram Spark, you are plugged into one of the publishing industry's largest global book distribution networks. They give you access to over 45,000 retailers, including independent bookstores and libraries. Get 15% off your first order of 15 books or more using the code Imaginary 15. This offer expires at the end of the year. Get started today. Heads up. As we talk about the making of Project Hail Mary, we will give away a few spoilers about the film, other than the fact that there's an alien in it. The directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were so committed to practical effects. They didn't use green screens for the outside of the spaceship. They had interactive lighting and black backgrounds outside the windows,

and the set was built four feet off the ground to make room for the puppeteer underneath if the scenes called for it. James says there are only a few scenes where Rocky is entirely CG. Grace and Rocky first meet in a tunnel between their ships. There's a transparent wall between them. But then Rocky builds a little sphere for himself so he can roll into Grace's ship. You're in a ball.

So Rocky, no die in grace atmosphere. I come up. Oh, you're coming up. Foreign, buddy. Detective. Grace and Rocky, big science. How to kill Asterovage together. I keep going this way.

This room's boring. Rock it. Science. Save Earth. Save Earth. Good plan. James couldn't puppeteer Rocky moving inside the ball. But they still built the ball for reference.

We put handles on it and I was just running through the set, screaming my lines, knocking into all of the stuff. So that there was always a reference for where, you know, So again, I never wanted Ryan to ever have to guess what Rocky was up to. Think of it this way. If the ball is moving quickly through the space, C.G. If the ball stops for a moment to talk, we've cut a hole in the floor, and Rocky is coming out of there. Coming from a theater background, this was perfect for James.

We shot at Sheperton Studios, which is in England. And it's actually a fun fact, the same soundstage they shot Alien. Oh. So that was fun for me to have a panic attack the first day when I went, oh, this is where alien happened. And it was also hard not to think about that while you're shooting these scenes in these, you know, tight little corridors and tight little spaces because. Yeah, no pressure. And also so much of that story, that film was so much about like the claustrophobia and how the cast lost their mind. And you were like, yeah, six months of that, you get it real quick.

So I was flown out to London shortly after I got the part. And I had a chat with Neil Scanlan and who runs the creature. and designed Rocky and with Phil and Chris. And I saw walls of artwork and I saw early mackets and mockups that Rocky hadn't been fully designed yet or fully finished. And I sort of pulled him aside and I said, Neil, I'm so excited to work with you. I've been a fan of your work for a long time. I mean, it doesn't, anybody can Google him and see the Oscars spilling out of his back pocket.

But I sort of went, how does this relationship work? Like, would you be directing me in the scenes? I'm very open to that. Believe me, I'm open to that. But like, who does what? How does this happen? how much collaboration are we talking about? And he said, no, no, no, James, think of it like this.

I'm going to treat this like your Frank Oz, and my job is to make Yoda for you. So he was sometimes trying to steal my passport, so I was there in London for months so that I could work with the creature shop team, never to design Rocky what he looked like, but to give lots and lots of feedback about, no, no, no, this elbow should be bungee,

this elbow should have a hinge, it should move this way, let's make him out of these materials, I want handles here. I mean, those early months, after I hired my puppeteers, the rocketeers, as I called them shortly afterwards, it was just this iterative process where we would just go, what if we stick a rod out of his head? What if we stick a rod out of his butt? What if we put a rod from here?

And it was just trying to get anything that felt that it could animate this, again, kind of dead object. He was all these hard surfaces made out of fiberglass, beautifully painted, beautifully sculpted. But I was just going, what are we going to do? Yeah, because he has no face. He has no eyes. No, not at all. So I couldn't make a choice about how I was going to play him until the puppet told me what it was good at, how it was expressive, in what ways it was expressive. For example, there was a thing that every version of the puppet that we played with, when you would raise up one of his legs, his whole body, the carapace would sort of rock to the side. And you would raise up his other leg and his body would rock the other way. So he always just looked unsteady and kind of shambly. So it was a little bit. So it was. in a funny way I had to embrace that by going, yeah, he seems unsteady because I think Rocky is deeply anxious here. You know, I think he's obviously, for those that read the book and know the story, before the story begins, Rocky has survived a pretty traumatic experience. And, you know, it's the first time that he's ever been alone in his life. You know, I was definitely thinking

about, you know, animals in captivity and what, especially guerrillas and what happens to their mind. but the thing that kind of cracked it, because again, we were playing with so many different things. And well, if he moves his legs slowly, he looks like a scary tarantula. No, no, no, no, no. If he moves really quickly, it becomes aggressive. Okay, what's the balance? How do we do this? And I was looking at all different things.

And the thing that cracked it, actually, I think I had gone home after a long day of just rehearsing with my rocketeers. And I was on TikTok, and I saw a video of a baby owl on the ground. and just these big eyes that look at the camera and this sort of like chicken-like way that the head was moving that, you know, because of course chickens don't have eyes that can move. Their whole head has to move every time that they look at something. But the funniest thing was, you know, it's a bird on the ground. It should be flying, but he's trying to walk somewhere.

I wish I could describe this better, but just had this sort of clumsy like, like, oh, yeah, yeah, we'll y'o, y'u'u'u. Fluttering around the ground, trying to get anywhere and also falling and stumbling the whole way and not acknowledging that they were falling. And I went, oh, that's really. really funny. So I showed that to my other Rocketeers. And we started working from there. Rocky is such a cerebral. He's a, he's a computer. I mean, his brain works so fast and is so

complex. But it doesn't necessarily mean he's paying attention to what his body's doing. So there's a take that managed to stay in where he has this epiphany and he's running down one of his xenonite ramps and he just fully like ass over tea kettle just falls, falls, falls, crashes. And then he keeps going as if he, and because he didn't notice that that happened. That, that owl thing ended up being one of the cornerstones of how we would approach the movement because when you saw that little owl in that video, you at no point felt threatened by it. And if the audience at any point in those first few scenes thought, no, no, no, Rocky's lying. He's really going to try to lay eggs in him or something. Then we lost them. You needed to feel from the beginning that Rocky needed help.

Otherwise, you know, this gorgeous story about empathy really wouldn't land. So how did you find your team, you're rocketeers. I communicated to Neil and my puppet coordinator on set that Neil assigned to me named Derek Arnold, who's an incredible artist in his own right and works on the Star Wars films. And I basically said, listen, I think I need other puppeteers. And they were like as assistants. And I went kind of, not really. I think we're going to play the character together. So we did a couple of auditions. I didn't really know a lot of the British puppet community other than sort of being fans with some people on Instagram. But Derek and Neil found me a gorgeous combination of London puppeteers that have theatrical experience, but also people that have done a lot of film because I needed to kind

of stack my deck to sort of know what was coming my way. And, you know, knowing that improv was coming, and knowing that so many of the scenes were going to be improv became how we would rehearse. So we spent about six weeks, eight weeks, basically just figuring out how to feel. each other, anticipate each other's instincts. Because if Ryan throws me a curveball that we hadn't rehearsed, I had to go with it. And I would love to. I wanted to. But it just meant that, you know, for those of you that don't know, puppetry is such an exacting, detailed medium,

especially when it's basically Bunraku, this Japanese form of puppetry that requires many puppeteers. That is usually so rehearsed within an inch of its life. But basically, we just had to understand the rules of Rocky so that we, could then flow with it during the take. So where are you in the film? Because, I mean, Rocky seems to be moving totally on his own. Were you, you're like wearing a green screen suit?

Yeah, all of us were basically in black or gray, depending on how bright, whatever set was. So a lot of the time when we're in Rocky's tunnel, we're all in black. And sometimes it's other colors. But knowing that we would owe it that the CG team would have to manually paint out our hands, our rods or whatever, meant that in some spaces where there was a lot of refractory light, like the cockpit set, it meant that we had to get really creative about where physically the puppeteers were so that we weren't in the way of those bounce lights that would have been such a

pain for them to try to put on later. Wow. I didn't realize how meticulously they had to digitally paint you out of every scene. And your team, too, because I mean, they're controlling the other limbs. So are they just playing catch up and like following along with you in real time? We again, again, we spent so many weeks together so that they could follow my lead, but also I would follow theirs. Because if Rocky's hand suddenly was going for an idea with the hands and communicating something, I would need to go with. So it was this constant game of playing the leader and following at the same time. Which although for an alien anyway, probably with so many limbs, you know, that might be just how Rocky works.

Yeah, I mean, a lot like an octopus, each limb has its own mind. And it helped us when we sort of let ourselves play that way. You know, we tried different versions where there were longer rods coming from Rocky. The more we tried that, the more Rocky kind of moved like a really sad marionette. So I basically kind of realized that we basically put handles coming out of either the top of his head or from the bottom of him, depending on the shot. So wherever his back was to camera would be where I was standing. And I was basically holding him almost parallel to my chest. So my head was always sort of looking down at the top of him.

But I was always on the head. And depending on the shot or what the moves were that we knew were coming, there would be a variety of lengths of steel rods that had been screwed very carefully into different parts of his forearms. And a lot of the other puppeteers would work me as well. We would all have monitors that would show. show us what the camera was seeing of Rocky because you would think I should be looking at Ryan the whole time, but in fact, I have to be staring at the puppet.

Well, then what do you, like when you're looking at the monitor, are you seeing what the camera's seeing? Yeah. So I'm looking at the monitor and looking at the take. And I'm just, you know, even if it's a wide shot, we're just kind of squinting into it to see like what's Rocky doing in the take, which is a really weird way of working. It feels like the most selfish form of acting. Yeah, or self-conscious.

I mean, it's literally like as if you're in a movie and you're acting, you know, as yourself. and the whole time you're watching, like, I mean, some actors don't even like to watch the dailies. Like, are they even want to watch themselves in the finished film? And it's like, how would you like to watch the film while you're making it? It was completely crazy for that reason. And I did sort of leave every take going, what happened? Like, I would just, you know, because again, I was, it was that, it felt like that patting your head and rubbing your belly thing.

Yeah. Being really mindful of what the puppet was doing and also flowing and following along. But I will say this. anytime that there was a close-up of Ryan and Rocky was still in the scene, we would take the puppet out just so that there wasn't ambient sound that we didn't want. And there was a booth that was 20 feet away that I would basically sit in with a microphone and a monitor, and I would continue playing the scene. He could hear me in his ear.

That was really the first time in a day of shooting where I would see his face, you know? And we had done it like six times at that point. That was the master class for me, like watching Ryan work that close in real time and being on the other side. of him. That was that pinch me moment was when I was in that booth by myself looking at him. And you know, Rocky doesn't understand emotion. And Ryan's giving a really stunning emotional performance in this. So the hardest part was for me to not be like, no, understand, like not start weeping while he's doing such great work. Yeah. I mean, so, I mean, I assume there must have been moments where you were improvising. Like, what were some of those moments where things happened spontaneously?

I can't overstate this enough. Every single. take we made up stuff constantly. Wow. I mean, sometimes we had 40 minute takes of just Ryan and I riffing, Phil and Chris saying, try this, try this. No, no, no, try this. The thumbs up with the thumbs going down is an improv from the day. What about when you guys start doing that dance together? When we're doing the Simon Says, you mean? Yeah, when you're like first learning to communicate and you're kind of mimicking each other and then it just kind of turns into a dance. Yeah, that was truly us making it up. I mean, there was definitely some things that Ryan would try and he would hear my voice coming from deep into the darkness of that tunnel and going,

we can't do that one, Ryan. This is my second episode about Project Hail Mary. Five years ago, I talked about the book by Andy Weir. Now we're talking about the movie adaptation with Ryan Gosling. And one of our sponsors this week is the audiobook of Project Hail Mary available on Audible. The great thing about a story like Project Hail Mary is that it can be experienced in so many different mediums. And there's an excellent narrator for the audiobook, Ray Porter. He's become a fan favorite, and his performance in Project Hail Mary won an award for

Audio Book of the Year. Ray Porter gets into the mind of Rylan Grace as he realizes that he's the sole survivor on a desperate last-chance mission, a Hail Mary for the human race. And there's a cinematic quality to Ray Porter's performance. He can evoke the mystery of interstellar space. the sense of discovery as Grace meets an unexpected ally, the moments of humor and the heart-pounding tension as Grace tries to stop an extinction-level event. Now that the Blockbuster movie has finally arrived in theaters, there has never been a better time

to start listening to the universally acclaimed audiobook. Project Hail Mary, Listen, watch, save the world. Listen now at audible.com slash Hail Mary. As I mentioned earlier, when Rylan Grace and Rocky first learned to communicate, Grace sets up text-to-speech software. And there's a funny scene where Grace tries out different voices. No, no, no need to even continue. Good, nope. Why is a schoolteacher in space?

What's so funny question? Why is a school teacher in space? I mean, it has charm, but no. Why is a school teacher in space? space? Why is a school teacher in space? That's not bad. I like.

All right. And in answer to your question, I have no idea what I'm doing in space. I don't remember. I asked James if he knew early on that they were going to use his voice for Rocky. No, I didn't know it was going to be my voice during the shoot. I mean, I think there was like maybe a 10% thought that like maybe it might be me, but, you know, who am I? It would have made much more sense to sell this movie with like a celebrity in that part. But no, the voice was this funny thing that surprised me because I had prepared something for that first chemistry read with Ryan.

And I don't even know what it was. It might have just been sort of bog standard robot. But what came out and it might have been nerves was like, robot Kate Hepburn. Spencer. You old poop. That would have been amazing if that was Rocky's voice. Believe me, there is footage somewhere of me sounding like that. And later, Phil and Chris went, maybe it's not that.

I went, great, thanks. The fact is, his voice is coming out of three laptops duct taped together with like a graphing calculator stuck on the back. So it shouldn't sound spectacular. It shouldn't sound perfect. So there was always sort of me playing with like vowel lengths where the software was lagging. You know, I liked the idea. It made me giggle that that. Rocky's only communicative tool was not very good.

So had a lot of fun with that. And it sort of evolved towards basically my voice with just slightly more annoying tones thrown on top. But then also, too, as an actor, I mean, you know, any actor, you put yourself with a role and, you know, as you build the character. And so was there anything about Rocky that you were able to sort of connect to

or bring part of yourself, put part of yourself into? I've said this many times. Rocky has a little bit of a younger brother energy, and I am a younger brother. You know, he's quite fastidious and he's quite brusque. He doesn't fully understand what the joke is most of the time. He's sort of going like, is this funny? And those are all qualities that I know my friends would use to describe me. I was forever on set trying to figure out a way to give him a little bit of an arc.

It's a story about friendship and friendship changes you. So how does Rocky get changed to? Grace goes on this huge journey towards sort of stepping into his own power. And it occurred to me pretty late in the game. Rocky's journey in the story. Of course, he's trying to save the world. He's trying to save his planet. It's two best friends doing science.

But I think because of the trauma that Rocky has been blaming himself for at the top of the story, he slowly gets to a place where he can forgive himself. So I think Rocky's story is one of forgiveness, self-forgiveness, so that he can then do his best work, basically. You can actually even see it. It's very subtle, and it's for the people that see the movie 10 times, but, you know, Rocky has a very sort of rigid way of speaking, but I wanted him at the beginning of the story to physically be quite unsure of himself and physically quite anxious and frightened and doesn't really know what this relationship is, and he has to make it work. And over the course of the story, you just start seeing him be a lot more physically comfortable.

and I think he kind of comes into his own power in a different way. That is so interesting. And also makes total sense because, I mean, you know, in the movie, when Ryle and Grace first meets him, Rocky's the only survivor on a ship and he's not sure why. And Grace figures it out and he explains to Rocky, you know, it's not your fault. And, you know, that moment must have been really humbling for Rocky. It was such a huge turning point in the story for that character. And, you know, the movie is told basically from,

Grace's perspective. We're sort of in his head most the time. But I needed that in order to feel any kind of security when we would be upside down pulling, pulling rods and twisting up, you know, hanging from strange perspectives and making up dialogue. I just needed some foundation I could hang on to. And there's a detail in the book. Again, I was scope. I was not scoping. I was scrolling through the book trying to get some more information about Rocky's personality. Andy does a spectacular their job painting that character. But I wanted to know, like, but who is he? What, what, what's really happening in there? And there's a detail in the book where Andy talks about eridian time. Erid is the planet that Rocky comes from. An iridion second is 2.5 seconds faster than an earth second.

So, of course, you know, we have our seconds. And then an eridian second is like, like, like it just moves like gangbusters, right? So that was such huge information for me, because it's told me that's what Rocky's inner tempo is. He has this sort of frenetic way of moving, again, like this bird-like thing that we kept talking, we talked about earlier. And that became a touchstone for me and my puppeteers. Remember that his heartbeat is like a hummingbird. We have to sort of play him that way. That's going to be something that'll make him distinct and not like we're doing, you know, your bog standard every other alien and every other movie. Well, Andy Weir comes to set a couple months later. And he's hanging out with my rocketeers. He was so sweet. He loved

coming to the puppet shop and seeing how it was done. And he was on set and he was just apropos of nothing was like, well, you know, an Orridian second is 2.5 seconds slower than an earth second. Oh, no. And I lost. I went, what do you mean, Andy? What do you mean? You know, he was like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's what I decided.

And I just went, well, I guess, I guess Rocky's just going to be anxious now. We had shot for months with this sort of core idea. So did you just like misremember it? I just misread it. But was fun is when I mentioned this to Ray the other night, the actor who did the audio book, He was like, no, yeah, the seconds are fast. That's how I played him. I played him with like a hummingbird heartbeat too.

So I think we both misunderstood the assignment. So now that you've gone through this whole experience, unless you get another amazing opportunity like this again, you're probably going to go back to theaters. So did you learn anything from making this film that you could bring back to theatrical puppeteering? I think the thing that the project taught me was I would be the first one on the set going,

guys, I don't think Rocky can do it. Like, I don't think we can physically make that thing happen. And they would just sort of, you would have a pause and then they would go, why? Just try it. This idea of, you know, being a perfectionist, which I think I'm a recovering one, this whole project let me let go of some of that. Because there was sort of no time to try to get it right. The only wrong was just.

not fully letting the expression out. So in a funny way, I think, you know, puppetry is all about control and all about, you know, the mastery of that and being a puppet master, whatever that is. And I found that turns out it's better, you can be a better artist if you're not trying to control everything. You know, my job was to act in the scenes, to puppeteer the things, but I was also like a coordinator. I was in every production meeting you can possibly imagine. No one on this project at any point, and this says a lot, no one on this project at any point treated me like I was a technician treated me like I was just a puppeteer, whatever that means. I'm doing air quotes. Or even the fact that you've never done a film before. I mean, you were unknown and you've got like

Ryan Gosling in the scene and they were, you know, it's not like there was this giant hierarchy on set. No. I mean, I was invited to show up as a collaborator and really engage with, people were asking me, what do you think? And I went, well, I have a lot of thoughts. Do we want to do it? But I will say this, frame store at the animation studio that literally, and they painstakingly animated us, we shot everything for real as much as we possibly could, and then I would shoot every scene again on a what we called the reference table. They made a miniature version of Rocky that was maybe only seven inches tall covered in dots, and we would play every scene on that table again. So the VFX team had full reference of my performance and how I wanted to play Rocky.

Now, the scenes would change in the edit, you know, that what we did on that table may not immediately play. But Phil and Chris were really adamant early on with FramStore, and I was lucky enough to see the journey from various cuts of during, while I was doing ADR. And you could see them slowly and slowly just can just basically impersonate what we did. Like literally, I can see the through line of, oh, on that day, we tried this bit of business and that business is in there. So I'm not to suggest that Framstor did not add their own flair. They certainly did. But this is what I mean. I was just so moved, you know.

There was no version. There was no guarantee that any of my work was even going to remain in the final film. There was a universe where Phil and Chris completely changed their mind about how Rocky looked and redesigned him and made him entirely digital. So when I saw the final thing and I saw how much of me and my team's work was there and so many of the adelaids and so many of these gorgeous moments that Ryan and I had and you. And yes, there will be deleted scenes because my God, there's so much content. You know, when I finally saw the final thing, I was just so moved to tears. I mean, it was impossible not to because nine months of my life was just up on that screen.

God, if I was in your shoes, I would buy like every rocky toy that has come out, every rocky action figure, the Lego set, everything. I'd like to. There's not as many as you think right now, so I'm hoping for there to be more. Yeah, for anyone listening. Yeah, send me some stuff. I want to see all that. It was heartening for me to hear how James' experience on the film kind of reflected the story itself.

I mean, he felt like an alien on that set, who came from a different world. But he and the crew figured out a shared language so they could work together. And he made a friend who is among the stars. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to James Ortiz. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. If you like this episode, text it to a friend, share it on social media, or leave a nice review wherever you get your podcasts.

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