PLAYING AN ANIMAL WAS ALWAYS IN THE CARDS FOR OWEN TEAGUE – AFTER ALL, THE FIRST CHARACTER THAT HE WAS OBSESSED WITH AS A KID WAS THE PRINCE TRAPPED IN A FURRY BODY FROM DISNEY’S CLASSIC ANIMATION, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. NOW, THE AMERICAN ACTOR IS GETTING TO REVISIT HIS CHILDHOOD FASCINATIONS IN KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES – THE LATEST TAKE ON THE CLASSIC FILM FRANCHISE. THANKS TO PERFORMANCE CAPTURE TECHNOLOGY, TEAGUE INHABITED THE ROLE OF NOA, A YOUNG CHIMPANZEE GOING ON A LIFE-CHANGING JOURNEY OF GROWTH. SHORTLY AFTER THE MOVIE’S BIG PREMIERE, WE CAUGHT UP WITH TEAGUE TO CHAT ABOUT GOING TO APE SCHOOL AS PART OF HIS PREPARATION AND HOW NOA’S TRANSFORMATION MIRRORED HIS OWN EVOLUTION INTO THE CHARACTER.

Hi Owen! Recently, you taped your very first talk show appearance with Jimmy Kimmel. What was that experience like?

It was good – very strange and very surreal. [Laughs] Honestly, I don’t remember much of it because I kind of blacked out. But apparently, it went well. The whole crew was super lovely to me, they were like, “Jimmy’s great, he’s gonna make sure that it goes well, don’t worry about it, kid.”

I watched it and there was a lot of ape jokes. [Laughs] Has that been happening for most of this press tour?

Yeah, this is my life now, lots of ape jokes. People call me a monkey and that’s okay. Something that has been really interesting throughout this experience is that you’ve got a ton of people just screaming your name and screaming at you to smile. When I was standing on the red carpet during the LA premiere, I was like, “Oh, this is what it feels like to be a chimpanzee at a zoo.”

[Laughs] Absolutely!

I was like, “Yeah, I get it.” This is the experience of a zoo animal. You have loads of people with cameras staring at you and yelling things.

They want you to perform for them.

Yeah. I remember there was one guy in LA, who was like, “Gimme a big smile!” And I just started cracking up because it was suddenly so absurd to me that here I am playing a CGI chimpanzee, and now I feel like an actual chimpanzee. It was bizarre but all you can do is laugh.

It’s a very singular experience, for sure. [Laughs] I read that Beauty and the Beast was your favourite movie when you were a young kid. What did you love about it?

I was three years old when I saw it for the first time. And the Beast was really fascinating to me. It was the film that made me want to get into acting but I didn’t really know what I could do with that at the time because I understood it was an animated character. And it wasn’t until I saw King Kong that I realised I could actually play an animal [in the future], when my mom explained to me who Andy (Serkis; the actor portraying the role of King Kong) was and what he did.

What do you find fascinating about playing an animal?

I think it’s almost easier to look at ourselves through the lens of another species. That’s why they teach animal work in drama school. And I love that kind of stuff. I think it allows us to get out of our own heads a little bit, experience things and feel stuff without overthinking it.

You went to ape school to prepare to portray Noa. Which aspects of the preparation helped you the most with tapping into this character?

The movement was really crucial. The way that Alain Gauthier, our movement coordinator, approached teaching us felt very organic. It wasn’t about impersonating apes or trying to get every little manner right, it was about creating a specific physical character that worked within the format of whatever ape we were playing. And so, obviously, there was a lot of studying. There was a lot of going to the Sydney Zoo, looking at YouTube, and watching documentaries. But when it actually came down to preparing for shooting, it was about creating a body that was reflective of what our characters were going through and what their internal life was. Additionally, I’d say that I didn’t really know who Noa was until I found his voice. And that was something that Alain was very adamant about introducing early in the process, which was really smart because it’s one thing to move and act like a chimpanzee, but it’s an entirely different thing to try to add human language on top of that and still make it feel real. It was really tough at the beginning, which I think was actually good because he starts out with being under a lot of pressure from his father; he doesn’t know what’s going to become of him or if he’s going to be able to do the things that he feels like he needs to do. And then, he’s basically forced to take this journey during which he finds his voice. So you can hear the voice gradually fall into place as he starts to feel more confident.

What about Noa did you find most relatable?

My God, everything! [Laughs] That was part of this epiphany when I was wondering if I could play this character. And then I realised that he’s kind of me. [Laughs] He’s got this scientific brain and he’s always fixing something or carving something with his little woodworking tools. And that’s what I did as a kid – I loved woodworking and building stuff. He’s got this deep sense of wonder for the world which I think I have as well, especially when it comes to nature. Also, he starts out very unsure of himself and that’s how I felt at the beginning of filming. And so the journey that Noa takes in the movie kind of mirrored my own journey of making the movie.

What have been the biggest adjustments in regards to coming from indie cinema to this big blockbuster production?

The funny thing is there wasn’t really that much of an adjustment. The only thing I had to adjust to was the knowledge that I was leading a however-many-hundred million type of movie, which as soon as you start shooting you forget about. It actually felt like a big indie movie. [Laughs] You know, in indie movies, you gotta love what you do in order to do it because nobody’s making any money. And this is how this experience felt, of course with the exception that everyone was getting paid more than they would on an indie movie. But it had the same kind of spirit of a bunch of friends getting together and making something – in this case, it was more than a bunch, it was a village of friends. [Laughs] The way that Wes (Ball; the film’s director) works is very collaborative and his vision is very clear.