Project Hail Mary: Andy Weir Talks About Giving Away Book’s Biggest Secret in the Trailer
They figured out how ‘so Rocky doesn’t have a face and talks in whale song’ but he’s still got a body. He’s got body language, and you can tell from moving him around this way, moving him around that way. Oh, he’s sad; he’s happy. They figured out how to make this work, and they absolutely nailed it, so I couldn’t be happier with the result.
Was there anything they did with Rocky that surprised you?
Not really. I was involved in every step of the way, of course, so there weren’t any huge surprises. But I thought it was cool they came up with a bunch of stuff. Within the book, Rocky just has vents, just kind of like holes in the top of his carapace for air transfer, but the Rocky in the movie, the vents are actually kind of these little rocks that move up and down to let air in and out. And that helps give him some kinetic motion while he’s doing things. So there’s more going on than just his body moving around.
Tell me a little bit about what Ryan brought to his character, and did he find dimensions or something that surprised you or intrigued you about Grace?
Oh, absolutely. So I’ve always considered one of my biggest weaknesses as a writer is my character’s depth and complexity. I feel like I’m always trying to get better, and I’m a very plot-driven author. So with Ryland, I tried to give him some complexity and depth, but he’s still kind of a little bit more shallow than I’d like. But then in comes Ryan, and he adds all these layers that I never envisioned before. He’s just really good at riffing and ad-libbing and stuff like that, and oftentimes he’ll come up with much better ways of doing something than the screenplay even had.
So what’s awesome is people are gonna watch this movie, they’re going to see this well-rounded character of Ryland Grace, and that’s largely because of Ryan’s performance, and then I’m gonna get credit for having come up with such a well-rounded character. So thanks to all of Ryan’s hard work, I’m going to get all the credit, and that just absolutely works for me. [Laughs]
