The morning of the “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” premiere, stars of the film Peter Macon and Ras-Samuel discovered they were staying at the same hotel while getting breakfast. And when they met eyes from either end of the buffet line, they did not greet each other with a wave or a simple hello, they did so as apes. Embodying their characters, they dropped their shoulders and shuffled together, hooting and panting at the sight of a friend.
“I’m sure we made a spectacle of ourselves,” Macon told PvNew at the Los Angeles premiere Thursday. “[But] we met each other as apes first and human beings second. So that is never going to go away.”
As previously reported by PvNew, the cast of “Kingdom” spent six weeks in “ape school,” where they learned to walk, speak, play and ride horses as their primate counterparts. According to director Wes Ball, their commitment to the program was so strong, that he would “wander downstairs” into their training room and “be accosted by a pack of apes,” noting that it “was a little intimidating.”
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“They didn’t stay in character. They became [their characters],” Ball said. “It’s in their DNA now, so it’s going to take them years to shake it.”
“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” follows a young chimp named Noa (Owen Teague), who must reconcile with the relationship of humans and apes while saving his tribe from the evil king Proximus Caeser (Kevin Durand).
On Durand’s first day on set, the precedent of off-camera monkey business was immediately set by his counterpart Teague, when he invited Durand to escape the production and converse in private entirely in character.
“We ran off for 45 minutes and improvised,” Durand said. “I told him about my thoughts as Proximus, and started to kind of bring him over to my side, showing him that I wasn’t just a big baddy.”
Eka Darville, who plays a 400-pound silverback gorilla, added that the “highlight of the entire” process was the freedom to escape himself and let his character completely take over.
“We spent a lot of time just embodying these beings and these creatures, and that was the most transformative thing I’ve ever done as an actor,” Darville said. “You really get to be something else. I think we all crave that a little bit as actors.”
“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is in theaters May 8.
