AGE OF THE APE

What was originally a novel called La Planète des singes in France and retitled Monkey Planet in the UK, Planet of the Apes has become a multimedia franchise based on the imagination of the French author Pierre Boulle, where the roles of humans and apes are reversed.

- Trevor Hogg

The latest entry, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, released in May as the first stop in a new trilogy that continues the story of simian takeover told during the rebooted universe’s previous three films, which swung into life with 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

“When I got the audition for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, I watched [the original] Planet of the Apes because my mum was like, ‘You have to see the first one’,” recalls Freya Allan, who portrays the mysterious human character called Mae. “It’s amazing how they did the prosthetics, but it’s a great story and film. I actually read the original book, which is very similar to that first film, but there were also the little pointers within our film, such as the human hunt, that make you think back to those original beginnings.”

Visual effects are nothing new for Allan, who played Ciri in The Witcher series created by Netflix. “With The Witcher, I’m fighting against monsters that aren’t there, which is a lot easier because you learn your fight routine and basically execute your moves like a dance and act accordingly to the kind of moves,” she says. “That’s a lot easier than having to play out whole scenes with no one in front of you, which is definitely a far more intense process.”

Over the course of production on Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Allan was handed the nickname ‘Queen of the Clean Plate’. “I had a word with Freya at the outset because she’s almost the only human that we see who’s interacting with the apes,” explains visual effects supervisor Erik Winquist. “Obviously, for her the performance takes were imperative because they gave her that connection to the guys playing apes.