EXCLUSIVE: James Ortiz Says He Built Rocky in 'Project Hail Mary' With Body Language, Trauma, and 'Latina Mom' and Italian Nonna Energy

Puerto Rican descendant puppeteer James Ortiz did not have a face to work with when he set out to make the alien Rocky feel alive in the Ryan Gosling-starring movie Project Hail Mary. No expressive eyes, no smile, no human shorthand. What he had instead was posture, rhythm, awkwardness, and memory, including the kind that comes from growing up around strong family personalities.

"It became all about posture and energy," he said in an exclusive interview with this reporter. Ortiz explained that bringing the alien fan favorite to life became an exercise in physical storytelling.

Because Rocky does not communicate through facial expression, the performance had to live in the body first. He drew on training connected to mime and mask work, where the actor must make even a simple action legible through movement alone. Ortiz even studied videos of birds to find the right sharpness and processing style for Rocky's behavior.

That choice helped create one of the movie's most unexpected emotional anchors. Ortiz said that when he first handled the puppet, Rocky had a slightly unsteady quality, sometimes bumping into himself and toppling over. Instead of smoothing that out completely, he folded it into the character. The result, he said, made Rocky seem "physically uncomfortable or nervous or anxious," a choice tied directly to the trauma the character has endured before audiences meet him.

Ortiz said he wanted Rocky to feel "a little shell-shocked" and then gradually soften as the bond with Ryland Grace deepens. It is one of the reasons he lands as more than a special-effects creation. He feels like someone, and that is part of the wild success of Project Hail Mary.

Then, he was chosen as Rocky's voice. "James understood Rocky so deeply that it got to a point where he knew what Rocky would say, what he wouldn't say, and what he would do. James was Rocky, and James is Rocky now, and you can't imagine it any other way," said Ryan Gosling to People about it.

So Rocky's movement was matched by a sassy, sweet, and tough personality.

In fact, Ortiz laughed when asked if Rocky's retorts carried the energy of a Latina mom. He said that was not far off. "Oh, my God, I was thinking about that a lot," Ortiz said, before adding that he was also thinking about the Italian nonnas who raised him. "I also was thinking a lot about my other half of my family being Italian, so I was thinking a lot about the Italian nonnas that that raised me."

He remembered telling directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, "this moment's a little more Sophia Petrillo, from The Golden Girls, and you would kind of see Phil and Chris go, I guess...'" He can also be Sofía Vergara in Modern Family, "A 100%, Because, you know, there's this sort of what I loved about playing Rocky is that, of course, there's this funny mixture of like, childlike wonder and also complete impatience, like, 'Why am I not getting this now?' Give it to me, give it to me, give it to me.'"

Ortiz explains Rocky's behavior: "There's something very bossy, a little bit of a bully, but with love. Because his brain moves so much faster than Grace's, there's a little bit of impatience there that I think I was definitely pulling from my family in a lot of different ways, especially my extended family."

The family influence also fit the mood on set. Ortiz, who is of Puerto Rican ancestry, described the production as an unusually warm and musical environment, especially with Lord involved. He said music played between takes and sometimes during them, helping shape the emotional temperature of scenes. Some of those songs, he noted, even made their way into the film.

That human texture is part of what has made Project Hail Mary connect so quickly with audiences. The sci-fi drama based on Andy Weir's novel opened March 20 and blasted to No. 1 with $80.6 million domestically, plus $60.4 million internationally, for a worldwide launch of about $141 million. It opened in 4,007 theaters, giving Amazon MGM what industry trackers have framed as a major theatrical breakthrough. The film currently holds a 95 percent critics score and 96 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and earned an A CinemaScore, unusually strong marks for a large-scale original release.

A puppeteer's story

That success has also put a larger spotlight on Albany-born-and-raised James Ortiz, who has spent years building a formidable career in theater and puppetry. Based in New York City, he is a director, actor, writer, designer, and puppeteer and the recipient of a 2016 Obie Award for puppet design for his Off-Broadway work on The Woodsman. His stage résumé also includes the much-loved Milky White puppet in the 2022 Broadway revival of Into the Woods, along with puppet work for The Skin of Our Teeth.

That background helps explain why Rocky never feels like a gimmick. Ortiz came to the film after years of combining design, engineering, and acting, the very intersection he said pulled him toward puppetry in the first place. Before Project Hail Mary, he told Civita, his work often involved designing large-scale puppets for theater and training performers who had never puppeteered before. On this film, he said, he suddenly had to "put my money where my mouth was."

For a movie about survival, communication, and trust, that may be the quiet miracle at its center. Rocky is an alien, yes, but Ortiz built him from recognizably human pieces, anxiety, tenderness, impatience, body language, and the unmistakable force of a loving family member who has no time for nonsense. That is why he reads as real. Not because he looks human, but because Ortiz made sure he moved, worried and loved like somebody we already know.