Was the Gordy animal actor attack in Nope based on a true story?

In my review of Nope, the Gordy storyline was one of my only criticisms of the movie. It was all well and good, but I felt it didn’t really enhance the overall storyline. Plus, cutting it would’ve shortened the movie without taking away from it. (Nope is over two hours long. Don’t get me wrong. It was an enjoyable two hours and 11 minutes. But the Gordy part of it was an opportunity to slim it down.)

However, Gordy’s rampage also contributed to some of the movie’s more disturbing and chilling scenes. It made me wonder what about it was true. Were there really no more chimps acting in Hollywood anymore? If so, was it because there had been an animal actor attack like the one Gordy unleashed in Nope?

So I did some digging, and here’s what I found out.

Hollywood Really Doesn’t Employ Chimpanzees Anymore

On July 3, 2020, PETA published a post from Katherine Sullivan that explained, yep. It was “curtains closed” as far as Hollywood using chimps anymore. The animal rights organization had relentlessly and successfully campaigned to raise awareness about the brutal training and abuse chimps endured behind the scenes.

Production companies responded. Those who were using chimps in ad campaigns or shows ended up stopping.

That’s not to say you won’t find chimps and other primates in the entertainment industry, though. They’re still plentiful in roadside attractions and circus acts.

And Variety pointed out that while shows like HBO’s His Dark Materials “utilize[d] CGI to flawlessly portray the relationship between Ruth Wilson’s character and her golden monkey,” other shows still use live animals. Such as a live capuchin that appeared in Netflix’s Ratched.

So it wasn’t a matter of a chimp going apeshit crazy (pun intended), like Gordy did during a taping of the fictional show Gordy’s Playhouse in Nope, that led Hollywood no longer using them. It was humans behaving badly towards them that did it.

But has there ever been a chimp animal actor that attacked during work?

Real-Life Chimp Animal Actor Attack

It didn’t happen while on a set, but in 2009, Travis the Chimpanzee attacked Charla Nash, 55, in Stamford, Connecticut. Nash was a friend of Travis’ owner, Sandra Herold.

On Feb. 16, 2009, Nash was visiting Herold when Travis escaped from the house with Herold’s car keys. I’m not sure if Travis knew how to drive the car, but he knew how to use keys to open doors, including to the car. Thinking it might help, Nash picked up Travis’s favorite toy, a stuffed Tickle Me Elmo, to try and coax him to come back into the house. Instead, it sent him into a rage.

Travis savagely attacked Nash, literally ripping her face off. In addition to losing her eyes, lips, and nose, she also lost her hands. Surgeons were able to reattach her jaw, but she had to undergo a total face transplant.

Travis didn’t have extensive acting credits, but he had appeared in Coca-Cola commercials and on The Maury Povich Show and The Man Show.

Worst Animal Actor Attack Involved Lions

Hollywood has got to have other stories of chimps attacking. Not that they do it often, but chimpanzees, both in captivity and in the wild, will attack humans if…

Well, the “if” is never always the same. They may be our closest cousins biologically, but they are still their own species. We may understand a lot about them, but not everything. There’s no telling what will set them off. (Heck, the same can also be said of our fellow humans too, can’t it?)

However, if there are other instances of such attacks, they’ve been either covered up, forgotten, or both. However, I came across one movie plagued by animal actor attacks.

Not that you’d consider all the wildlife that appeared in the 1981 movie Roar “actors,” but if you’re looking for a movie with a lot of animal attacks during filming, that’s it.

Roar was written and directed by Noel Marshall (producer of The Exorcist). He also produced and starred in it, alongside his wife at the time, Tippi Hedren (The Birds).

It was a family affair cast-wise, with Hedren’s daughter, Melanie Griffith, and Marshall’s sons, John, Jerry, and Noel, also appearing in the film.

It took five years to complete filming. Maybe because turnover was high? I imagine retaining employees is difficult when they fear some of the cast might want to eat them. In the first two years of filming, there were at least 48 reported injuries. But overall, 70 out of the 140-person crew sustained injuries during production.

In 2015, the New York Post wrote about Drafthouse’s re-release of Roar after they’d acquired its rights. They played up its reputation as a “suicide mission” and “the most disaster-plagued film in the history of Hollywood.” They even gave it a new cover and tagline: “No animals were harmed in the making of this movie. 70 cast and crew members were.”

Judging from that, you’d think Roar was a horror movie of some sort. Nope. It’s after-effects were. Marshall’s marriage and directorial career ended. But the movie was categorized as an adventure comedy thriller.

Gordy in Nope Fun Fact

So if Gordy wasn’t a real chimpanzee, then was he created using special effects? Honestly, I don’t know.

I’m not 100% sure how they accomplished the Gordy scenes, but my educated guess is that yes. Special effects played a part. But so did actor Terry Notary who is credited as playing Gordy.

In fact, Notary has a lot of experience playing primates. You could say he’s carved a niche for himself. He was also “Kong” in Kong: Skull Island, “Rocket” and “Bright Eyes” in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and reprised his role as “Rocket” in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes.

Check-In

Have you seen either Nope or Roar?