Director Wes Ball breathes new life into the global, epic franchise set several generations in the future following Caesar’s reign, in which apes are the dominant species living harmoniously and humans have been reduced to living in the shadows. As a new tyrannical ape leader builds his empire, one young ape undertakes a harrowing journey that will cause him to question all that he has known about the past and to make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.
Nick L’Barrow spoke with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes actor Travis Jeffery about Ape Camp, working with Andy Serkis, and his initial reaction when he got the role!
Nick: I can imagine when something like Apes comes along, at this point in your career, that’s a pretty big get! I’m curious to know what your reaction was when Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes first came to you?
Travis Jeffery: It’s very, very surreal. And it’s still surreal! You know, I’m such a huge fan of this franchise, and a huge fan of the last trilogy, and a huge fan of Wes [Ball, director].
It’s always funny, you get these briefs for like Planet of the Apes or Pirates of the Caribbean or Unbroken, and you go, “This is out of my reach.” Then the Apes process started, and it was a really lovely audition here in Sydney, and Wes wanted to have a chat.
I didn’t know if it was another audition or what this chat was going to be about! So, he jumped on the call and said, “Well, what do you want to chat about?” And I said, “What do you want to chat about!” [laughs]
But he showed me through the storyboards, and it was from the moment that I sort of knew that Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was something special that I wanted to be a part of.
Nick: I guess for the readers, just to put it into context, we’re talking a few weeks after the film’s release, and the reception to the film has been incredible. If it still felt surreal just being a part of this franchise, how does it feel knowing it resonated so well with audiences too?
Travis Jeffery: You know, it’s just so heartwarming and just so lovely to see people enjoy something as much as we enjoyed making it. Everybody who made it we’re just such fantastic people, regardless of the film we made together. These people deserver everything because they’re so wonderful.
And it’s exciting to see what happens next and see where this all goes. You never want to count on anything happening until it happens, but fingers crossed we all get to play again! It’s just really nice to see people get some enjoyment out of it.
Nick: As a fan, my fingers are crossed too! Now, I’ve seen this come up in a few interviews with the cast, but I’ve restrained myself from looking it up because I want to hear a firsthand account about it! Can you walk me through what ‘Ape Camp’ was like?
Travis Jeffery: [laughs] It was like being back in drama school! That’s probably the easiest way to describe it! We rocked up to this downstairs basement at Disney Studios. They put up some monkey bars, had all these padded poles around so we didn’t hurt ourselves. And we all rocked up day one, excited to do our best. But we were all nervous because we wanted to do a good job!
When we started warming up, the beautiful movement coach was like, “Everybody relax. There’s no winning here.” And we all just took a deep breath and relaxed, and then from there, spent six weeks getting deep into the movements and building the characters.
It was like a rehearsal, which you never get in film. It was a luxury. But a great byproduct of that was the relationships we created. I got some feedback from the studio three weeks into the shoot, and they we really stoked with the trio [Travis, Owen Teague and Lydia Peckham], and how those relationships were reading on screen. And that’s because every weekend, I was taking them around Sydney and hanging out, and we all just got really, really close.
Nick: How much does that relationship and trust with your fellow actors help when it comes to performing, literally, like a monkey?
Travis Jeffery: Absolutely! That’s what Ape Camp did for us. We all just felt like complete idiots to begin with, but everyone was trying to put 150% in, and we really lifted each other up through that discomfort.
It was a really tricky thing too, kind of finding these apes voices 300 years later. Are they still talking the same as they did in the last movies? What’s developed over the 300 years? That kind of trial and error, just mucking around and then seeing where it sort of landed, which Wes was so trusting with.
I kind of find it some of the most “actory” acting I’ve ever done. It’s just pure imagination a lot of the time. You’ve got a pole drilled into the floor that’s supposed to be a tree. But we had the actors’ eyes. And luckily the cast is so incredible, so it was easy to bring these imaginary scenes to life just by feeding off of and having each other’s backs. The trust, it was so important.
A lot of us hadn’t done motion capture before, but we got this live feed of, like a puppet version of the apes on a screen. And we got to see how the body sits, hand movements, how head movements were working.
And we had a couple of sessions with Andy Serkis, the greatest of all time, you know, mentoring us in these moments. He’s just such a master of the physicality of being an ape. It was such a fascinating process, and we were really well supported across the board throughout the whole time.
Nick: It really is fascinating! But I’m curious to know how Ape Camp then helped you create the character of Anaya. How much of the character did you have prepared before going into Ape Camp, and how much did the process change after?
Travis Jeffery: Yeah, it’s a great question! It was such a fantastically organic process once we got into Ape Camp. I think I understood who Anaya was, and that was only really through briefs and what the casting agent sent out for the audition.
I felt that, to me, Anaya sort of represented the innocence of Eagle Clan, and the cheekiness! He felt like an Australian larrakin! I understood his essence from the audition process, and followed what my gut was saying.
I didn’t try to do too much with the physicality of it before we started rehearsals because I didn’t want to ingrain any bad habits. I’m not an expert! I’m just an actor whose trying to be an ape!
Leading up to it all though, I just tried to get as fit as possible and do as much script work as possible to understand the humanity of these characters. There’s such human emotion. I think that’s what draws people to these stories, you know? It’s a reflection, it’s asking interesting questions of whether the chimps will make the same mistakes we have made.
Nick: I’ve spoken to a few actors who talk about how much a costume can help them get into character. But your costume is a grey, spandex, motion-capture suit. So, how did that change the element of the process?
Travis Jeffery: It’s interesting because I’ve done a lot of war films throughout my career, and usually you’re on location, decked out in a costume. And it really feeds the performance because it’s taking you one step closer to that reality, suspending that disbelief.
But with this, I guess the physicality was our costume, you know? We would warm up in the morning, and by the end of the warmup, you’re a couple of feet shorter because you’re an ape now! You just kind of know how it feels to be your chimp.
Thank you so much to Travis for being so generous with his time! Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is in cinemas now.
You can also watch the full, unedited version of Travis’ interview below:
