James Ortiz ’10 Makes a Faceless Puppet Irresistible
He’s the voice of the alien Rocky and the puppeteer who brings him to life in the feature film Project Hail Mary.
“Rocky is sure to be the breakout star of Project Hail Mary, and Ortiz is partly responsible for making him so irresistible.”
James Ortiz ’10 creates another unforgettable puppet character performance, this time on film opposite Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary (Amazon/MGM). He brings life to the extraterrestrial creature Rocky as both puppeteer and voice.
The award-winning actor, director, and puppeteer has worked mainly in theater until now. Notably, the puppet he created to play Milky White in the 2022–23 Broadway revival of Into the Woods garnered critical acclaim, as did The Woodsman, the Obie-award-winning play that Ortiz also wrote, directed, and starred in.
For the film, Ortiz worked closely with the puppet’s designer, the legendary Neal Scanlan, and suggested he consider the Japanese form of puppetry known as Bunraku.
“It’s this incredible form of puppetry where there’s always a collective of puppeteers operating it at once, and it’s just rods,” Ortiz says of Bunraku in an interview on inverse.com. CGI shots were only used when Ortiz and the team he led couldn’t fully perform the scene.
Ortiz and Gosling spent a lot of time improvising, and Ortiz served as Gosling’s scene partner, reciting Rocky’s dialogue from a sound booth.
“The real surprise was James Ortiz, because he was just supposed to be the puppeteer,” Gosling tells Entertainment Weekly. “He was never supposed to be Rocky’s voice. He just had such a deep connection with the character that I could ask him anything as Rocky, and he knew what Rocky would say, what he would like, what he wouldn’t like.”
Much to Ortiz’s surprise, the directors opted not to have a higher-profile actor re-record his part, as they believed there was no way to improve upon the chemistry.
Project Hail Mary opened in theatres on March 20, 2026.