How Project Hail Mary's Most Emotional Goodbye Came From
Summary
Puppeteer and voice actor James Ortiz says Rocky's farewell gesture grew out of a ridged arm marking nobody had found a use for.
"The farewell scene between Ryan Gosling's Ryland Grace and the alien Rocky in Project Hail Mary grew out of a design detail and a suggestion made during filming, James Ortiz, the actor and puppeteer who voiced and performed Rocky, told SlashFilm in an interview published Tuesday.
Ortiz said Rocky's designers had been working on the character for about a year before he was cast, and the puppet's look was updated with tattoo-like markings about halfway through his eight-week rehearsal period. Many of the markings had no specific meaning, which let the team invent uses for them. One ridged section of Rocky's arm reminded Ortiz of a guiro, the percussion instrument played by scraping, but ""we hadn't found a use for it.""
When Grace asks, ""So how do you guys say goodbye?"" Ortiz first answered, ""We don't,"" which he said didn't work. Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller suggested through an earpiece that Rocky run one arm along the ridges of the other, creating a farewell sound from his home planet, and the puppeteers adjusted their control rod to perform it. ""Great design should be inspiring to other artists, and that's exactly what it was in that case,"" Ortiz said."