A well-known face from Tampa is in the newest summer blockbuster, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” which opens on Friday.
In the most recent episode of the renowned Planet of the Apes series, which dates all the way back to the 1960s, Owen Teague, a resident of Tampa, plays the title role.
One of the film’s primary protagonists, the chimpanzee Noa, is portrayed by Teague. He discussed his Tampa background and the new movie with Linda Hurtado of FOX 13.
The 25-year-old actor is a Blake High School alum who has appeared on stage at Sarasota and New Tampa theaters.
Teague discussed how much fun it was to make the movie with a motion capture suit.
“It was wonderful. It was so much fun. It was honestly some of the most fun I’ve ever had acting. Because it’s just so freeing; you get to fully become the character,” Teague remarked. “You know the audience isn’t going to see you, they’re not going to see your face. They’re going to see your performance, but they’re not going to see you.”
He stated to have spent a week studying the behavior of orangutans and chimpanzees at the Center for Great Apes, a sanctuary located near Wauchula.
“The director of that sanctuary, Patti Ragan, let me come down and spend a week just watching the chimpanzees there. It’s such a wonderful place; she kind of calls it a retirement home for the apes. Many of them have been in entertainment, many of them are pets. And so they’ve learned all these behaviors that aren’t really their true behaviors, so they just get to live out the rest of their lives as chimpanzees or orangutans.”
Now showing in theaters is the film.