Puppeteering Project Hail Mary

Imaginary Worlds

Eric Molinsky

Fiction, Arts, Society & Culture, Science Fiction

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2026

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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

Transcript

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0:00.0	Now, are all the traitors present?
0:02.5	Let's get started, shall we?
0:04.5	From rags to riches.
0:05.8	I'm so sick of this.
0:07.0	Working like a dog and being treated worse.
0:09.1	Yorkshire to New York.
0:10.7	Or climbers, you and me.
0:12.4	A life dedicated to revenge.
0:14.4	Let's make this an occasion to remember.
0:16.9	A woman of substance on Channel 4.
0:19.1	Stream now.
0:20.8	You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief.
0:26.3	I'm Eric Malinski.
0:28.2	In 2021, I interviewed Andy Weir about his novel Project Hail Mary.
0:33.9	At that point, Weir was best known for writing The Martian, which is about an astronaut who gets stuck on Mars and has to figure out how to survive.
0:42.7	Project Hail Mary is also about survival in space. When the story begins, a guy named Rylan Grace wakes up on a spaceship.
0:51.3	He's light years from Earth. The rest of his crew is dead. And he has amnesia.
0:57.8	He eventually remembers that he's on a mission to save the Earth, but he doesn't remember why he was
1:03.4	chosen. He was not an astronaut. He was a middle school science teacher. When I did my episode about the book five years ago,
1:12.6	the publisher didn't want me to give away a big twist without a huge spoiler alert.
1:18.3	The twist is that Rylan Grace comes across a friendly alien in another spaceship.
1:24.7	Why did I just tell you that without saying spoiler alert?
	...

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