Project Hail Mary, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller from the 2021 science fiction novel by Andy Weir (author of The Martian adapted into a film by Ridley Scott starring Matt Damon), stars Ryan Gosling and Sandra Hüller.
Gosling plays Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher, who wakes up on spaceship light years from Earth, with no recollection of who is. As his memory returns, he remembers that a mysteriously powerful woman (Sandra Hüller) sent him on this desperate mission to discover why one distant planet had not been infected by a substance causing the sun and all planets to die out. He was chosen because of his advance degree in molecular biology. Grace forms a friendship with an alien being he names Rocky, and together they have to figure out how to save the galaxy.
We interviewed the actors and the directors in Los Angeles.
RYAN GOSLING
Q: How did you get involved in Project Hail Mary, not only as an actor but also as a producer?
RYAN: The author Andy Weir sent me his unpublished manuscript asking for my involvement in both capacities. It was clear that Andy had captured lightning in a bottle and had written something very special. When I got it, it was a time in 2020 when movie theaters had closed down, and film productions were shutting down. So it felt like an impossible mission, but the theme of the film and the book, this idea that as human beings we’re capable of more than we think we are, it’s really powerful and a helpful thing to be reminded of at this time. Here was this incredibly moving, optimistic opportunity to look at the future as not something to fear, but to be figured out, which is so empowering and it felt like a very radical approach.
Q: How would you describe this reluctant hero who ends up saving the world?
RYAN: Ryland Grace is not stoic in any way, he’s not brave in any traditional sense and he doesn’t have any illusions about being a hero. But he keeps trying. It’s such an epic journey: you blast off to another galaxy, you make an alien best friend, and you save the world. Project Hail Mary is about the sun dying, but it’s also deeply hopeful and somehow relatable. It supports the idea that we’re capable of solving impossible problems, that if we don’t give up, miracles are possible, and that in the darkest, most dangerous moments, we are not alone.
Q: Except for several flashback scenes, for most of the time you are alone in space with Rocky. How did you manage to act with a puppet?
RYAN: It was such a special experience to work with Rocky as a practical presence. James Ortiz was just meant to be the puppeteer at first, and there were six puppeteers with him at all times, we called them the Rocketeers, but when he became Rocky’s voice, suddenly he was so deeply connected to Rocky that we were able to improvise for hours outside of the script. Then the process of working with Rocky on set very much mirrored what it was like in the story for these characters. Rocky has no eyes and no mouth, but he is so lovable that I’m excited for the world to get to meet Rocky and have him in their life, because it’s been a joy to have him in my life for the last five years.
Q: Did you study subjects like physics, chemistry, astronomy, and mathematics in school? Was there a teacher that inspired you to succeed?
RYAN: I didn’t graduate high school, I struggled and was not good in those subjects. But I was excited to play the kind of teacher I wished to have in this movie. I did have this one teacher that really had a big impact on me. She set this reading goal, where if we read the most books, you could take a ride in her Jeep. The person that read the second most books won a new Kids on the Block CD. I didn’t get the Jeep ride, but I did get the CD, which I really wanted. And when she left, at the end of the year, and I had seen Dead Poets Society (1989 by Peter Weir with Robin Williams), I stood on my desk and I said, “O Captain! My Captain!” A reference to the poem by Walt Whitman that none of the other students got, and I’m not sure that she got…
Q: It’s not the first time you went to outer space in the movies. You played Neil Armstrong in First Man (2018) by Damien Chazelle. Would you like to do that in real life?
RYAN: No, I’m happy here on Earth. I like pretending to go there, and I’ll pretend to go there again, I’m not done with space, but I don’t think I need to do it for real, I’ll leave that to the professionals.
Q: What do you hope that audiences will learn from watching Project Hail Mary?
RYAN: Andy Weir’s voice is so important right now, such a unique and beautiful way to look at the future. It’s the adventure of a lifetime, but at the same time it’s not escapist. This idea of turning fear into curiosity has such a beautiful message that you can actualize, or at least try to. And I hope that this is the spirit that young people take from the film.
SANDRA HÜLLER
Q: Sandra what helped figure out how to play such a complex character as Eva Stratt?
SANDRA: I think we are never just one thing, we are so many things at the same time, and the more possibilities a character has to show what they are, the better; so I don’t see any contradiction in what she’s doing. Eva was completely new for me, somebody who is doing her job very well, who has the respect of everybody and is leading the way in a lot of things, who has patience and courage and humor and heart, so I wanted to try to create this sort of energy.
Q: Did you look to some real life contemporary leaders as an inspiration?
SANDRA: I have to admit it that I thought a lot about Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact (1998 by Mime Leder) where he played the President of the United States. I love the way that he is present and warm, but strict at the same time. He can deliver hard truths with such a love that is very inspiring to me. I also looked at the world leaders who are female these days and how they do their job in such a different way than we see in other places. And I found that very very inspiring. I was thinking about who I would want to be governed by, what kind of person would that be whom I would trust and and follow. So that’s what I tried to put into this character.
PHIL LORD, CHRISTOPHER MILLER
Q: Phill and Chris, when producer Amy Pascal, who had worked with you in the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse animated movies, asked you to direct Project Hail Mary, what made you say yes?
CHRIS: When we received the manuscript of Andy Weir’s novel, we read it in 24 hours. I stayed up all night and I went to bed at 5am, because I had to find out what happened. What’s really interesting about this movie is that we don’t think of it as sci-fi, we think of it as a human story about a relationship, about a friendship between Grace and Rocky.
PHIL: It presents as a space adventure, a disaster movie, then a third of the way through, it becomes an intimate character study between two individuals who have to learn how to communicate. That shift is what makes it special.
Q: Rocky is such a lovable character, a giant alien from another planet, who teams up with Grace and communicates through math to figure out a solution. How did you create him?
CHRIS: It actually ended up being a beautiful marriage of puppetry and animation. There was an animation team that did amazing work, trying to imitate a lot of the work that James Ortiz, the lead puppeteer and the voice of Rocky, and his team of puppeteers had done for some of the shots that were not possible to be done in puppetry. If we don’t make you fall in love with Rocky and make you say, I would die for that rock, then we’ve failed. The challenges of this story is trying to make you care about a creature that has no face, no eyes, no mouth, and trying to tell a story that takes place mostly inside of a spaceship out in outer space, with only one human being. It was about finding a balance, because life is funny and sad and exciting, all at the same time, so, we didn’t ever think, we shouldn’t try to have fun here because this is a serious scene. I know that some of the funniest moments happen in your life when you’re at your saddest. And that type of thing, where you can make an audience feel like they’re crying and they’re laughing at the same time is why we go to the movies.
Q: How was it for you to work on this film with the screenwriter, Drew Goddard, your co-director, the producers and the crafts team?
PHIL: Project Hail Mary is about two buddies that do something together, and that’s what a movie set is, that’s why we have this amazing producing team, it’s the conversations amongst artists and performers and crew that augments everyone’s creativity, what you see on screen is the product of all of those wonderful people thinking about something together. What I love about the movie is that it’s about how two people think about something really hard, about how all these people on earth, led by Sandra, are thinking together and how powerful that can be. But accomplishment at this level is messy, space is messy, spaceships are messy. All the guts are not behind a smooth iPhone case. We always say this movie is not a Mac, it’s a PC, where the architecture is on the outside, in case you need to access it, if it blows a gasket. And one of the ways we wanted to distinguish this movie from other space epics was that it’s messy.
Q: What is the hopeful message or our times you wish to convey with Project Hail Mary?
CHRIS: The heart of the movie, in every scene on Earth and in space, it’s about beings coming together to solve problems. That’s what makes it feel so optimistic. Even though it’s technically about an apocalyptic event, it’s not bleak, it’s not cold, it’s not antiseptic, it’s warm and hopeful. It shows you what the spirit of humanity is. And what is fun about the movie is that it makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it makes you scared, it makes you feel all sorts of different things. So it doesn’t really fit in a genre box, but that’s the way humanity is, the human condition is to feel all those things right up against each other.
English version of text written for Best Movie, Italy
Final Trailer (if you like spoilers)