Interview: Motion Capture Actor Allan Henry Talks Kong, Character Study

The world of motion capture is full of wonderful, talented individuals carving their craft throughout Hollywood’s biggest films. The unsung heroes of VFX, their work brings characters to life as living & breathing heroes & villains in our favorite stories. Recently, Kaiju United got to sit down with Allan Henry, a Weta FX alumni, who best known for portraying Kong in Godzilla vs. Kong and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire about his early influences & mentors, portrayal of various apes in films, and his outlook to the future.

Jacob Lyngle: Hello, KU! I’m here with Allan Henry, a motion capture actor, stuntman, D&D enthusiast, and just a warm, welcoming face in our community. Allan, did you want to go ahead and introduce yourself?

Allan Henry: Yeah, sure! I’m Allan Henry. I’m a thoroughly strange person. I wanted to be a cartoon when I grew up, so I did everything I could to be physical and weird. I did lots of movement-related things, things like acrobatics, gymnastics, dance, and martial arts. Now, I am a performance character artist and actor, and I do a lot of monster work and creature work. I’m a big, big nerd… a big, big nerd, but of course, in no way, any kind of, you know, absolute expert. There’s still so much about this kaiju fandom and all of the other things that I’m involved in that I’m always learning more about, which is really wonderful.

JL: What types of media – such as television, film, or art, influenced your youth and adolescence? What made you want to become a cartoon character as a kid?

AH: I grew up in the 1980s and early 90s of New Zealand. Looney Tunes was very big in particular. New Zealand television had older shows like that on because we were a little bit behind in broadcasting. We had a lot of shows that ran longer than they did in other places. So growing up, I watched a lot of Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbera cartoons. When I wasn’t watching those, I was also a big fan of Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Pro Wrestling, like WWF. Wrestling was big, really big in New Zealand in the 80s. We would stay up late on Fridays and watch WWF. The athleticism of those performers was incredible, and the costumes were always awesome. This is back in the day of epic tag team performers like The Road Warriors and Shawn Michaels & Marty Jannetty. We’d get big bits of cardboard and try and design our own Intercontinental Championship belts. My cousins would also watch action movies, like Universal Soldier, Arnold Schwarzenegger films, and Sylvester Stallone films. We’d gather around and watch those movies all together. Because of all of this, the idea of being a physical performer in some way was always prevalent in my mind.

I liked the idea that cartoons could do anything. They had this absolute freedom to do and be whatever they wanted to be. There are so many times where, if you’re watching Scooby-Doo, Scooby would change his shape to kind of show the gang what type of ghost or monster they were chasing. In Looney Tunes, Wile E. Coyote would get squashed by a rock and then be absolutely fine. He’d just be in an accordion shape for a while. (laughs) So as a kid, I was like, this seems silly and fun, and I love it. And the fact that they can just do what they want and kind of be whatever kind of person or creature they wanted to be was inspiring. There was this sense of boundless and limitless possibility with cartoons. I was like, I need some of that.

JL: Is that the appeal of motion capture for you? You can be anything – Thanos, Kong, Christmas Elves, or Cocaine Bear?

AH: Yeah! In that realm of acting, there’s more freedom to be many things. In live-action screen acting, part of the role is, is the aesthetic – there’s the look, and (gestures) that’s what you have. If I play a character that needs to have hair, I have to wear a wig, and put on costumes… that’s a whole thing. But if it’s motion capture, it’s all virtual. So the possibility of the roles that I get are just as wide. There’s so much more possibility for me to do interesting things in motion capture than there is in live-action. I love live-action; I really do. But you know, the current system is still having some difficulties. Even in 2025, people are getting typecast into specific kinds of roles based on what the studios want. Basically, what their idea of what kind of actor you will be, and what kind of product you will sell. Mocap, performance capture, and virtual/digital work, they’re just like, well, we just need a giant monkey. Do we have someone that can not only move that way, but also understands the story beats and the acting that’s required? This especially for something like Kong, where they’re like, you don’t have any dialog, so you still have to portray all of this emotional range with your physicality and with the way that you look and interact with Suko, Jia, or whoever.

JL: How do you obtain roles in motion capture? Do they just go “Yeah, I need someone to play a big gorilla. This Allan guy does a good job.” Or is there more of an audition process?

AH: Good question. It’s a bit of both. It depends on the project. With Cocaine Bear, I got that job because the film’s director, Elizabeth Banks, contacted Weta and said, “Hey, can we have a little Zoom meeting? I want to talk about the performer for the bear.” She knew that Weta FX were going to do the VFX bear anyway, so she said to them, “Do you know someone who would be on set, so the actors have someone physically to work with, and who we can build the shot around, so the camera team have something to work with?” Weta replied and said, “Yes, Allan Henry, that’s the guy we’re going to use anyway. So it would be much, much more helpful for us if he were on set, because then he would know how everything was working, and when he came back here to work in the studio, he’d know it already. We wouldn’t have to ask too many questions.”

I had two Zoom meetings with Elizabeth and her production team, like some of the Assistant Directors. She [Banks] talked to me from one actor to another. She said, “Talk me through your process. How would you approach this character? What do you think about character’s journey in the story?” After those two conversations, she felt comfortable trusting that I would understand her direction when she gave me acting direction, as opposed to movement direction.

For A Minecraft Movie, which (as of the time recording this interview) premieres in a couple of days, I got that role through an audition process. So that was a proper like, go into a room with a casting director and deliver lines and talk about physicality kind of thing. That leads to what we call a recall audition. After that, we were doing some physical tests at Weta, and the director [Jared Hess] and the production team visited and did a session with us that day. From there, everyone was like, oh, yeah, cool. Of course, Allan’s very, very skilled and understands this whole process really well, but also can give us the kind of characterization that we want. So sometimes, it’s auditions, and sometimes it’s word of mouth and recommendation from people that I’ve worked with. For some of the video games I’ve done, it was the same thing. They said, “We’re working on this video game. A person on the team has worked with you before, and said that you’ve done the sort of stuff. Would you feel comfortable coming to work on this?” And you’re like, “Yes, of course, I love video games!” (laughs) So it changes based on the project.

JL: Is the film industry in New Zealand different than some of the more standard practices you hear about in Hollywood?

AH: I think New Zealand is New Zealand. The system is a bit different here, just because of how small our country is. Everyone knows everyone. So a lot of the time, word of mouth is just going to be a faster process than auditioning across the country. Sometimes, though, the audition process is necessary, I think. If we were any larger, such as the size of Australia, word of mouth would be tough. You would be almost limiting yourself if you were just working on word of mouth as opposed to auditioning with a larger populace, because you can’t know that many people that well. So, you can lose the chance to see something really wonderful and great if you don’t audition that many people.

In comparison to Hollywood, I think it’s more that there are different nuances for our industry here. The kind of American, Hollywood system or template is how everything is kind of based in this country. New Zealanders, we’re well known for our work ethic on both cast and crew gigs. New Zealanders traditionally work very hard; we understand that, like, “If I have a job to do, then I would do the job very well.” Sadly, because we as an industry aren’t unionized, that means that transparency around what your role is and what your expectations are, and your obligations, are a bit muddier. It’s a bit harder to define, and again, being non-unionized makes it very easy for work to come here and kind of take advantage of that, of that in terms of the workforce. So it’s a doubling sword. We get a lot of work coming this way because our countryside and the landscapes are beautiful, and the people who work here do work very hard. But it would be nice if New Zealanders were compensated fairly, I think. We’ve been working very hard to try and change that, and we’re still working out to change it. Thankfully, it is getting better, compared to when I first started doing this around 2010. I’m now being paid better than I was, and the conditions are better. We are on an upward trajectory, which is good!

JL: Tell us about your story from when you were in drama school, where you got to visit Weta and see Andy Serkis performing as King Kong. What were your biggest takeaways watching a master, in the wild, doing their craft? Did you get to speak with him after?

AH: I was at drama school and one of my tutors had a very strong working relationship with a lot of the production managers and producers at Weta FX. She called in a favor and got permission for my class to go into the studio and watch a session. It was incredible! We kind of knew what was going on, as we had seen some of Andy’s work already in terms of [Lord of the] Rings, and we knew that he was doing this stuff for Kong. Walking into that studio, seeing him in the suit, and actually witnessing what the what the setup was, you wouldn’t expect to have that kind of experience without a special case scenario.

He [Serkis] was so focused on the work; he wasn’t distracted by us when we came in, and we were kind of ushered off to the side to some couches, just to sit and observe. He was just so focused on the job and so professional & respectful. And then when they said, alright, yeah, that’s good. We’ll take a break, Andy just came straight over to us and was like, “Hi, I’m Andy. I heard you guys were coming.” He had a full on conversation with us, asking us about our training and how drama school was going. When he was asking us questions about things such as our plans after drama school, it was clear he was genuinely interested in the answer.

At one point, the director came over and said, hey Andy, we need to get back and do this next shot. Instead of immediately going back, he pulled rank a little bit, and he said, “Just give me a couple more minutes.” He just sat for a bit longer and spoke with us. He was really generous, warm, and very encouraging in terms of what everyone wanted to do. It was very much just another actor doing his job and chatting with people who were interested in similar kinds of things.

I think there are two main things I took away from that experience. First of all, he was a nice person. He was a good, nice, warm human. When he was working with the directors and the production guys, he was still that, very nice, generous, respectful person. Then, when he came and spoke to us, he was that same person. He was a pleasant person to work with and to watch work. You felt comfortable in his presence, that everything was going to go smoothly, and nothing was going to be a problem.

In terms of his technique, what really struck me was that Andy has a has a real ability to find stillness in his characters. Andy is one of those actors who can just be present in a character. He can sit, be still, and just breathe and look at something, and you see it shine through. You can definitely see it in his Kong work, but also in Caesar and Planet of the Apes. The way that he would breathe and find that stillness, I was like, ah, there it is. That’s the thing that I knew as a young actor, I was like, I can’t do that. I remember teachers telling me about that, and I really need to work on that. The stillness in characterization was something that I really tried to bring, especially to Kong, when we worked on Godzilla vs. Kong, and then Godzilla x Kong, because there’s no dialog. I wanted to convey this idea that Kong is strong enough and powerful enough and confident enough to just be still and breathe and look at things, process them, and have a have a reaction.

He didn’t have to gesticulate; he didn’t have to talk with his hands, and he didn’t have to jiggle around and be fidgety, which is, you know, how Allan Henry is. I’m very kind demonstrative and illustrative with my hands. There’s a bajillion things going on in my brain. That was one of the things I really tried to carry into that work, especially not just because of what Andy had already done with Kong, but in terms of what I had seen other actors do. And I was like, oh yeah, you don’t have to try and have that. You don’t have to tell people that you have gravitas. You just be present and be still and have gravitas. That’s where it comes from. It’s like that old saying, if you have to tell people that you’re cool, you’re not cool.

JL: I have a few names of individuals that shaped your career that I’d like to run by you. Tell us more about them. The first one I have is Tony Wolf.

AH: Tony Wolf was my mentor and teacher when I was younger, who taught me stage combat, and he eventually became the cultural fighting styles designer for Lord of the Rings. He was one of the first people to really open my eyes to this idea that movement and physical performance could be performative and could tell the story. You weren’t just learning these cool fighting moves to look cool. These fighting styles have rich history and backgrounds. He was also a pro wrestler in the 80s and he taught me pro wrestling moves. I get to feel cool knowing that as a kid, I was like, I’m going to be a wrestler like the Ultimate Warrior. And then, you know, I hit my teens, and there’s this guy who’s like, yeah, I can teach you how to do a suplex. I can teach you a power bomb and elbow drops and all that stuff. Yes please!

When I started teaching properly, I would go back to my drama school to tutor and teach. I met two young actors who had the same conversation I had with Tony back when I was younger. They were like, “We want to do what you do, Allan. We want to do this kind of performance.” I was like, great! Let’s begin. One of them, Tyler, said to me, “I actually want to be a pro wrestler.” So, I was like, well, you’re in luck my friend, and I taught him the brief kind of stuff that Tony taught me. Those skills, I think, have created a strong enough foundation where, now Tyler wrestles semiprofessionally in New Zealand. He went to the Hughes Academy of Professional Wrestling. He’s regularly doing matches in Auckland and other parts of New Zealand. When I found that out, I was thinking to myself, this is so cool – having a little sprinkle in this lineage of weird wrestlers in New Zealand.

JL: The other name I have is Shane Rangi.

AH: Now, Shane is like the older brother of this creature performance motion capture dynasty in New Zealand. He was one of the OGs, in terms of when it started to kick off. There are a group of actors who have been doing creature performance and suit acting, like the Tokusatsu stuff, for a long time. Shane is one of those guys who’s been doing it long before we got into it. He was the Minotaur in the Narnia films, and he’s been giant orcs and monsters and creatures of all sorts. He was really generous with his time when I tried to organize a little chat with him about my interest in this field and my ambitions to do more of this work. In fact, he kept an eye out for any job opportunities where I could come in as a junior, an entry level kind of actor, and learn from the people around on set.

He stayed to his word, and he got me jobs and opportunities, inviting me along, sometimes for short stints, and sometimes for long sections. I learned from him and the colleagues around him. He’s always tried to find ways to support other actors coming up with this work. He’s also like six foot 1000 inches. (laughs) He’s so tall, and he’s just like, this big, muscular, Māori ma, but he’s a big sweetheart. He’s an absolute softer. He loves cracking jokes. He plays a mean guitar. He loves sitting and eating together and just chatting and relaxing. Now he’s a very talented writer and director. He’s written feature films and directed some, and is now writing another one. It’s like the dude has creativity for days. His generosity is wonderful, and he’s such an asset to the New Zealand film industry, not just because of what he’s done, but also because of the foundation that he’s setting for the others coming up.

JL: Another notable motion capture actor, Terry Notary, previously played Kong in 2017’s Kong: Skull Island. Did the role get passed to you from him? Did you just get the part after an audition? How did that all happen?

AH: Yeah, it just kind of happened. During the production of Godzilla vs. Kong, Weta was working on the on the VFX anyway, similar to Cocaine Bear. One of the animation supervisors invited me over, and he said, “Hey, you’ve done big apes before. Do you want to come and do this other stuff?” I was like, Yeah, sure, that sounds fine,” and we went to work. Originally, it was kind of some previz stuff, like previous visualization. Adam [Wingard] loved what they did with that, so they were like, yeah, you guys keep working on some more shots. The animation supervisor was like, okay, well, then I’ll just get Allan Henry back. We ended up working on so much of that film, that when Weta got the gig for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, they kind of just went look, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Also, they were doing the production in New Zealand or Australia, and I was a lot closer than Terry was. At the time, I think Terry was busy on something… I think it might have been Apes? It might have been after that. Point is, Terry’s always busy all the time. So for me, it was the right place and right time, but also, having the previous experience and laying the groundwork for that sort of stuff from other films.

JL: What are the fundamental aspects of Kong’s character you kept intact in your performance that are present across all previous incarnations?

AH: I think the biggest fundamental that is carried across all of the Kongs going back to the original is this idea that his eyes are really important – that so much of his communication is through his eyes. This is not only in terms of how we connect with him as an audience, but also how he mainly connects with the people or the creatures around him. Kong’s eyes feature heavily in Peter Jackson’s Kong, and they feature very heavily in Skull Island as well. When we worked on the two MonsterVerse films, we looked at the way that Kong kind of interacts or deals with a problem or a challenge. The idea is that Kong truthfully knows just how strong he really is. He will square up and face whatever is taking his attention. There’s not a lot of sideways, looking over the shoulder movement from this character. He may glance and look at something, but then, if it requires his attention, he’ll turn to it. We wanted to emphasize this idea that Kong was always kind of square to whatever he was dealing with or whatever he was focused on, and, whether it’s standing up or sitting and crouching down, he’s got his eye on it. For instance, in Godzilla vs. Kong, when he’s chained to the boat in the rain and Jia runs out and puts her hand up, Kong turns, sees her, and arranges himself so that he’s facing her when he leans down and touches her hand.

Also, the way he breathes is important. The fact that he has these big shoulders, and you can really see the way he breathes during quiet moments. I guess the slamming the chest and roaring is always a classic, too. We tried to do some other subtle little changes, because the early Kongs, in terms of, the stop-motion and the Tokusatsu suitmation stuff, is based on a human understanding of anatomy and physicality. Peter Jackson’s Kong, on the contrary, is very much a gorilla in terms of the way he moves – lots of time spent on quad. But with Skull Island and then the MonsterVerse films, he’s become more upright in terms of how he stands and presents himself and interacts with things, so we had a little bit more freedom in how he was moving, making it more humanistic, I guess. So as an audience, you had an easier time identifying or resonating with that character.

JL: With you previous involvement in the Planet of the Apes franchise, how did you differentiate the more realistic apes from a more fantastical ape in Kong?

AH: Well, interestingly, kind of in between the Apes franchise and Kong, I also had the chance to do some work for King Louie in The Jungle Book. In the film, King Louie is a Gigantopithecus, so we started experimenting with that idea of size and scale. He spends most of his time interacting the way an orangutan would, as opposed to standing up. Even though he says, “I want to be a human,” he doesn’t get up and actually put on a hat and, you know, kind of dance the Charleston. It’s this idea that he knows that he’s a Gigantopithecus. His desire to be like a human manifests in his desire for like, power, control, and leadership, as opposed to him wanting longer legs so he can put on pants.

In the Apes franchise, our focus was trying to convince the audience that these are Chimps and Apes that they would recognize in the real world that have begun to evolve and get smarter, but they’re still physically apes, in terms of their skeletal structure and their musculature in the way they’re made. We had to creatively figure out their evolution, because they’re not suddenly going to stand up and grow longer legs. How do we show that evolution? We did so in terms of their thought and ability to interact with the world. For example, when the Apes are holding rifles, they’re still holding them the way that Apes would hold something like that. Toby Kebbell does a great job portraying Koba in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, when he swaggers up and drinks the whiskey and then guns down those soldiers. There’s this wonderful moment where you can see flickers of a human-esque idea of what Koba thinks a human is like. You know, subtle things such as how he should stand after firing that gun. But it’s still rooted in this idea of what an ape can physically do. We have to ask ourselves, what are the limits of their physical range of motion?

For something like Kong, you go, great, we don’t have that constraint of having to be believable as a chimp anymore. Kong does have the face structure of an Ape or Simeon of some kind in the way that his proportions look, especially when he’s on all fours. Those are the points where you see and say, oh yeah, that’s an Ape. That’s the way an Ape moves and stands and postures around. Then when he gets up, that’s when you remember, that’s right, he’s a Titan. He’s built a little bit differently, and he’s smart enough to understand that when he has to fight, his hands come up, and he gets ready to grab things and punch things and swing his axe. There’s a wonderful moment in GXK after he’s been blasted by Shimo, and he’s got all that horrible frostbite on his arm. He gets cornered in the in the canyon. He’s hoping that One-Eye and the rest of the Apes will trigger the rocks, but he knows that he may have to square up and fight some dudes. You see him bring his leading hand up, but because his back hand is so injured, it doesn’t work as well. But he still knows he has to bring that hand up. He doesn’t just leave it hanging by his side and, you know, square up with one hand. He’s like, no, no, I gotta fight with both hands, no matter what.

JL: You famously also portrayed Skar King in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. How were scenes done when both Kong and SK shared the screen? Was there another mocap actor?

AH: Sometimes we would have a boxing bag or a mannequin for me to interact with. But most of the time it was another actor, and that actor was Luke Hawker, who plays Suko. He was originally going to be Skar King. We kind of did early movement tests and stuff, and eventually, he was like, actually, Allan, you move on the arm extensions much more naturally than I do, because you’ve done it for so long. Do you want to try this? I was like, yeah, sure, I’ll give it a shot. The animation guys were like, actually, this is actually going to be faster. Luke was like, that’s fine. I’ll just focus on Suko. Totally fine. But when it came to those scenes with Kong and Skar King, he and I would work out the choreography and learn both sides, and then when the shots called for different camera angles, we would switch. It was great, because in mocap, you kind of have the freedom to collaborate and tweak things in between shots, because the setup time is so quick. Luke and I would have conversations, and he’d be like, “So how is your arm?”

In the scene where he’s reaching out and picking at Kong’s silver tooth, I was like, “Yeah, cool. Play with that length. Be a bit further away, lean out to it and kind of flick it.” We would talk, collaborate, and work alongside each other. Sometimes it was a boxing bag, sometimes it was a mannequin, and sometimes, it was just a pole or a ball on a stick. So there was all sorts of things, but predominantly, it was Luke and I jumping back and forth.

JL: The fan-favorite leaning pose that Skar King does early in Godzilla x Kong – was that your idea? Who came up with that?

AH: It was a little bit of both. They wanted him to have this laid back kind of feel in terms of his confidence and his arrogance, right? And I jokingly said, “Is it really extreme, like JoJo?,” and I did, like a Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure pose. And they were like, “That’s too far, but if you just pull it back a little bit…” After that we were like, this kind of works… why does this work? Then we remembered, it’s an iconic pose. You see it in media, especially in Japan, all the time. In Dragon Ball Z, Majin Buu famously does it. You also see it in so many Japanese movies, where the gangsters or bad guys do it to show their arrogance. Similar to these characters, Skar King has that swagger and that confidence and arrogance where he’s like, “I don’t even have to be ready, Kong. You’re just not fast enough.”

JL: Is it true your co-star, Godzilla, was all CG? There was no motion capture actor involved?

AH: As far as I know, it was mostly via animation, like keyframe animation and stuff. There may have been a performer. I, funnily enough, originally thought it was TJ [Storm]. Ever since King of the Monsters, I was like, well, it’s TJ, obviously. Look at him. The dude loves it! He’s very good. But then I found that it wasn’t, which was very surprising. I don’t know if there was a fully virtual Godzilla or if they had a performer. In terms of what we did at Weta for the impact scenes and the fight scenes with Godzilla, a lot of the time, we just treated it as a stunt kind of performance. If there were impacts, then it’d be a stunt performer with like a pad or a kick shield just crashing into me or a boxing bag being flung into me. That way, you could see Kong meet some kind of forced resistance and then have to muscle his way down to the ground or whatever. It’s possible to do that with a person, but you get more aggressiveness and can rough house a little more with a static object.

They also have human-sized mannequins that are in proportion, that have mocap suits on with markers so we can track them. The amount of times either as Kong or, like, Hulk or Thanos or Steppenwolf, that I’ve just had to pick up this mannequin and just dump it on the floor, or swing it by a leg, or, you know, pick it up and throw it in the air, or hit it with an axe or something… that mannequin has definitely put in the hours. One day, he’ll get a credit for his work. One day… (laughs)

JL: In the scene where Kong picks up Suko and utilizes him as a weapon, was there a prop for you to use?

AH: They made a scaled Suko for me, and they put dots on it. They were like, here you go, have at it, Allan. These are the targets. It was so much fun because previously, we had worked on the shots just beforehand, where you see Suko, and it’s revealed he’s a nasty little traitor. It was great to kind of be like, yeah, I’ll get him, and have those moments where you could just go to town, kick that guy, throw it at another guy. It was so much fun. It was so silly. Initially, they were like, “We don’t know if this is going to fly.” Alessandro [Ongaro] was like, “I think it’s a good idea.” Adam [Wingard] loved it too. Originally, it was like, Kong throws Suko and then kicks the ape, then we kind of move on. The studio was like, uh, did he die? Did Suko just die? They came to us and were like, “Cool, we need a shot of Suko landing on the ground and getting up, like “I’m fine!” so the audience knows he’s not dead.”  Because he just gets thrown! We don’t see him for a while after that, for like two or three shots. So you’re like, “Is he dead?”

JL: In your talk with Monsters With Attitude, you talked about going to the local zoo and looking at the Sun Bear while you were getting ready for the role of Cokey the Bear in Cocaine Bear. Tell us a bit about that. What did you study about the bear’s behavior?

AH: Oh, yes! That’s Sasa. She’s a Malaysian Sun Bear. She’s right next to the tiger enclosure as well, so when you go there, you’re like oh, it’s a tiger, so cool. And then you look over, and you’re like woah, a sun bear! That’s awesome! She’s just like chilling out in there. Sometimes she’ll wander around. When they do the talks and stuff, Sasa is very chilled out, because she’s by herself, and she feels very comfortable in her space. But you should know, like, she’s still a bear. Sun bears are dangerous. They used to have four sun bears, and they had to get rid of the other three because they were all fighting so much. They don’t enjoy sharing their space with other bears. All of the bears were just getting injured because they were just scrapping all day, every day. The other three were sent to their own enclosures elsewhere around the world. Sasa now has her own space, and she’s been much more mellow and chilled out now. There’s a discussion to be had about the ethical ramifications of captivity and enclosures, but I’m just glad Sasa is a much happier bear now.

When studying Sasa, I must have looked very, very strange. I mean, if you’re studying with an actor, or with a person, you can really delve into the motivations and the inner world of these characters, but for like the chimps and for Sasa, the language isn’t there. So I have to make creative choices about what I think is happening. I’m lucky enough that the internet exists so I can look up documentaries with people who are animal behavioral specialists, right? They talk about the way that these creatures behave, and they talk about the decisions they make. I would look at Sasa, and note what her energy level was like, because I know that she wasn’t lazy. She was very, very efficient with her use of energy. When she was looking around, she wasn’t just aimlessly looking in space. She was looking at things. She’s smart, too. She knows her own name and she knows the time of day when the food arrives, so she would be more active at those times, because she’d know that there’d be food somewhere.

I saw the way that she would predominantly interact with her surroundings with her snout. Humans, we have these wonderful hands, so we can kind of manipulate things and interact with our world this way. We can touch things, bring them closer to us, and observe them. But Sasa, she would use her nose first, she would sniff things and kind of taste things or lick them, feeling her way through the environment with her snout. She’d do this before she’d use her paw to like, pull a piece of food towards her, or try and scoop something out of the water. It would always be snout first. That was something that I had to be aware of for Cokey. When Cokey is rampaging through the forest, her nose and her head are going to be the leading, inspective device that she uses, and then she’ll get involved with her paws. But yeah, so I was like, making notes, writing things down, drawing little sketches, just trying to invent justifications in my own mind that I can then use when I portray the character.

JL: It’s amazing how much seriousness goes into something, that on paper, is as silly as “a bear ingests a bunch of coke.”

AH: Exactly. The key to comedy is to play the drama. The characters in the comedic situation… they don’t know they’re in a comedy. They just are themselves, you know. So you play the stakes of the character; you play the circumstances of the scene. The comedy comes from the fact that it’s a ridiculous situation to be in and you’re reacting the way you are. You don’t always have to push and try for the gags. This is especially true with the big silly films. It’s like, yeah, I’m pretending to be a dude in a suit of armor, and as far as this guy is concerned, this suit of armor is incredible. It helps him to do his job. But from the outside, you’re like, oh, yeah, it’s Iron Man. Iron Man isn’t going to be breaking the fourth wall. Deadpool is probably one of the only characters that knows that he’s in a comic book. The others don’t. They’re still like, I’m in this situation. This is my world and I’m a character inhabiting this universe with its own rules.

JL: Can you tell me about some of the technology and equipment you guys use? In reel on your Instagram, I saw you refer to something called a “Halo Rig.”  What is that?

AH: That was with mc_popsicle, yeah! There are always these cool things in this field, especially when it comes to stuff like, how do we get actors and performers, humans in the real world, to defy gravity? With the influx of superhero films, everyone’s flying nowadays, so they start building these incredible contraptions. The Halo Rig is one of the classics. You have a performer in a harness, and they have a belt that essentially is a ring around them that’s got bearings or casters in it. The interior ring can move around, and the exterior ring is suspended so it can be lifted, allowing the performer to be above the ground. That same interior ring is attached to their harness, so that they can a have full 360 degree rotation. Then, you can pivot around, and you can place them.

There’s all this wonderful technology that goes into it, in terms of, like, how do we puppeteer a human being that’s bound by the laws of physics? You see it in early movies where characters have to flip. Everyone is flipping very similar. Everyone flips tight because there’s two wires either side of them that they had to paint out in post-production. If you flip a certain way, you’re just going to hit the wire. It’s funny to watch, because you’re like, oh yeah, I can see you dodging the wires. With the Halo Rig, a lot of it comes from like, a smaller harness, which is nicknamed the Hong Kong Harness, because it’s the harness they would use in Hong Kong cinema when they’re doing all the swordplay & stunts, and they had to go in different directions. They were leaping on rooftops and running up walls. Those performers really nailed how to maintain a naturalistic way of moving while still having wires going everywhere – I think modern cinema owes a lot to those performers and the groundwork that they laid out.

JL: You’ve recently upped your convention appearances, having gone to events such as G-FEST, San Diego Comic-Con, and Grand Rapids Comic Con in the past year. How’s that been?

AH: I personally really enjoy it. It’s a wonderful chance, not only for me to see places that I’ve always wanted to see, but I also personally really love meeting fans, not just of my work, but people who love things that I love. I always love talking with those fans and sharing in that infectious joy and that passion. Cons are awesome because they’re these wonderful bubbles of nerdy, geeky fandom acceptance, right? You can be like; I like this thing, and you’ll find other people that love it as much as you do. Sometimes the opposite, and that’s fine too. In fact, at Grand Rapids, I got in trouble a couple of times because I kept running away from my table to go and meet people that I wanted to meet. (laughs) I was like, I saw this person, and I’ve always wanted to meet them. I’ll be right back. My manager was like, okay, fine. After meeting that guest, I run back, and he’s like, people came by, and they were looking for you! I was like, “Oh no! I’ll go find them.” My agent had to be like, “No, stay here. Don’t move. We’ll go get them.”

G-FEST was my favorite by far, not just because it was focused on me (laughs), but the Kaiju fandom is really great. It’s really awesome. Also, G-FEST is such a specific con. I mean, all the other comic cons, it’s Comic Con, so they’re huge. There are a bajillion communities there and a bajillion fandoms. When it’s that niche, the saturation of people who all love the same thing is a really wonderful place to be, because you can just focus your energy on the different aspects of this fandom that you love. I imagine it’s the same when you go to, like, the Star Trek cons, or the Doctor Who cons – it’s specifically focused on that one part of the fandom.

JL: Several of your mentors are starting to pivot into writing and directing. Has that been something that’s crossed your mind a little bit, or are you primarily focused on the motion capture art career?

AH: I think that’s entering more of my thought space now. I mean, realistically, I’m getting older, so I can’t always do the things that I used to do when I was 20. Rather than be like, well, I guess I’m done, because nobody wants that, I’ve been like, how do I stay in this industry? I’ve spent so long just waiting around for the good jobs to come, which is a stupid way to be. I’m like, you know what? Screw it. I look at my friends and my colleagues, they’re just making their own work. They’re just doing what they want. They’re creating the work that they want to do.

Also, since 2000, I’ve been teaching stage combat or movement performance in some way, shape or form, and passing on that knowledge and nurturing that new generation of performers, some of them who I’m working with now, which is really, really rewarding. The idea of being the kind of mentor that my mentors were to me with in terms of like Terry, Shane, Tony, and my drama teacher, Cecilia, the kind of mentors that they were to me. If I can do that for the next generation of people, then it feels like I’m having an impact and being part of a lineage of these performers, writers, directors, and creatives. I do love directing and writing things. I mean, I play tabletop role-playing games. So I’m writing, improvising, and directing all the time through that. But yeah, I’m getting older, so, you know, eventually my body’s going to be like, alright, alright, that’s enough. I don’t just want to fade into the background when that happens. I’d rather find another way to be helpful and to kind of feel like I have contributed or made some impact, had something to say. I still want to feel like I matter, you know what I mean? Like most people do. You want to feel like you’re you matter to the people that you love and to the industry that you love.

JL: When that book is closed, what do you want the story of Allan Henry to represent?

AH: That is a great question. I think I would like… and it’s interesting… because I’ve just been reflecting on the passing of Val Kilmer today, actually, who was a like, an underrated genius of an actor. You look at some of his most iconic things, like Doc Holliday, but there are so many other roles too. I first saw Val Kilmer in Top Secret. I was thinking about his work and his legacy; he was an actor who was so talented and so varied and able to do so many things. Then, I look at other actors that I’ve been personally working with, like, I recently worked with Jack Black on Minecraft, and he’s a wonderful human as well as a great actor.

I would ideally like people to be like, “When Allan was performing and when he was doing work, he did good work, and he got asked back because he was so talented.” “His work helped improve the art that he was part of – not just fulfilling a role or just a cog in the machine.” I would like people to say that the work was made better when Allan was on it, because that’s the way I think about my mentors. My life has been better because they’ve been in it and because of the teachings that they gave me. So, you know, it’d be nice for people to think of the work that I did that way.

JL: We know there is a sequel to GXK filming right now. Are you coming back?

AH: I can honestly say that when Grant Sputore got the job, he called Luke Hawker, who played Suko, because he and Luke worked on I Am Mother, and they had a conversation about working on this next film. Luke was like, you know Allan’s right here, right? Grant was like, oh, okay, good to know. Conversations have started about the next film and Weta FX is going to work on this film. And so far, when Weta FX has worked on a Godzilla Vs. Kong film, Allan Henry has been involved. I can’t say yes or no, unfortunately, but as soon as that was announced, reaching out was on top of my list.

What’s great is, at G-FEST, I met Linda Miller, and there was like a little fan petition to get Linda into the next film, alongside a video that was sent through to me. They were like, Allan, do you think you could pass this on? I was like, absolutely! What’s the worst that can happen? Grant can say no? All right. So I was like, look, Linda Miller, she’s part of that Kong lineage. At the time, I was saying, hey, maybe Allan Henry should be in this film? And then, I was like, well, if not me, what about Linda Miller? I mean, he can always say no, you know. If he says no, he says no. He can never take away the fact that I am Kong for at least two movies, but it’d be great if it were three films. We’re very optimistic, but who knows?

JL: Allan, thank you for taking the time to sit down with Kaiju United and discuss your career. We appreciate all you do.

AH: Thank you very much. I appreciate all of you as well. It was such a joy to have a chat, and nice to see you again after G-FEST.