‘Project Hail Mary’ Co-Directors Break Down How They Got Meryl Streep On Board With Surprise Cameo Voice Role
Meryl Streep truly can do anything — including provide an automated voice to a spidery-rock-like alien in Project Hail Mary.
The Ryan Gosling sci-fi film from co-directors and collaborators Chris Miller and Phil Lord, which bowed in theaters March 20 to positive audience and critic reactions, features a school teacher-turned-astronaut who wakes up aboard a spaceship with no recollection as to how he got there. While uncovering the aims of his mission, he forges an unlikely friend and ally in an intelligent extraterrestrial life form, whom he names Rocky.
Once Dr. Ryland Grace (Gosling) devises a computer-operated translation system to communicate with Rocky, who emits musical vibrations as his mode of speech, he chooses from a pre-selected menu of vocal choices — one of which is three-time Academy Award-winning actress Streep.
“When we were on set, we did a bunch of silly voices ourselves,” Miller told Entertainment Weekly in an interview. “We had people from the crew do voices just to make Ryan laugh and have the characters have something to react to.”
“We tried to imagine voices that would be preloaded into a text-to-speech kind of translator,” Lord added.
That’s when the filmmaking duo had an epiphany: “And then we [thought], wouldn’t it be fun to get Meryl Streep? And Ryan just said, ‘She can do anything,’ and that was perfect,” Miller explained. “So we’re like, ‘OK, well, now we’ve got to ask Meryl Streep,’ and so then you’re like, ‘OK, Amy Pascal, our producing partner on the movie, had made movies with her — many movies, like The Post and other movies — so she had a relationship. So we’re like, ‘Amy, you got to—’”
Lord interjected, laughing, “You have never seen a group of filmmakers procrastinate longer. And then she did, and she was wonderful.”
Miller concluded of Streep being game for the surprise, uncredited cameo: “And she was so fun and thoughtful and playful and did a million different versions: ‘I’ll do more. You want me to try this? Try that?’”
Ultimately, Rocky is voiced by James Ortiz, one of five puppeteers controlling the creature. Though Rocky is brought to life mainly through practical effects, Gosling previously told People that in certain scenes he’s actually acting alongside stand-ins, including his two daughters.
Project Hail Mary is currently playing in theaters.
