For Johnny Sequoyah and Troy Kotsur, the horror of Primate wasn’t just about screaming on cue. It was about knowing when not to.

In an exclusive interview with Gayety, the film’s stars reflected on the challenge of sustaining fear, building trust on set, and reacting to a creature that felt far too real for comfort. Their answers reveal a horror experience rooted as much in emotion as in terror.

Finding the Right Level of Fear

Asked about maintaining such a heightened sense of suspense throughout the film, Sequoyah said the biggest challenge was restraint.

“The challenge in it is almost finding the dial of how scared you should be in certain parts versus others,” she said. “If you’re at a certain level the whole time, you have to find scale in it.”

For her, fear in Primate isn’t only about survival. It’s also about loss. “As much of it is the characters being scared,” she added, “it’s also the heartbreak of something that they loved kind of going mad.”

Kotsur approached fear from a different sensory perspective. As a Deaf actor, he described reacting less to sound and more to physical presence.

“There’s no problem for me with scary situations because I can’t hear what’s going on,” he said. “It’s everything I see, feel, and smell.” That awareness shaped his performances, especially when deciding how much emotion to show. “You don’t want to overreact,” he said. “My approach is to keep it below the surface with plenty of emotion throughout.”

Trust, Chemistry, and a Very Unusual Scene Partner

Despite the chaos that unfolds onscreen, Primate is grounded in family tension and friendship. Sequoyah credited much of that authenticity to the film’s commitment to practical effects.

“We had practical effects for Ben,” she said. “I got to actually work with an actor who plays Ben. We all did.” Treating Ben like any other cast member allowed relationships to form naturally. “We got to bring so much nuance to the relationship dynamics because of that.”

Kotsur echoed that sentiment, describing a collaborative environment where reactions stayed genuine. “We throw ideas back and forth,” he said. “Sometimes she surprised me and you catch that raw reaction.” He noted that Ben’s physicality helped guide performances. “You’re really reacting to what you’re seeing, which looks scary.”

When Acting Feels Too Real

For Sequoyah, the realism occasionally crossed into physical aftermath. “Most of the stuff where the chimp is very physically close to me, I would come out of those scenes shaking,” she said. “Your body doesn’t know what’s real or not.”

After intense takes, grounding herself became part of the process. “You just had to take deep breaths afterwards,” she said, “make sure your body knows you’re not actually being killed by a chimp.”

Kotsur, who plays a father both onscreen and off, connected deeply with his character’s misplaced trust. “I trust my daughter and her friends,” he said. “Ben is the family pet. Ben keeps them company.” The horror, he noted, comes from how quickly that trust collapses. “When I come back, everything has turned into a big mess.”

In Primate, fear doesn’t arrive all at once. It creeps in, settles deep, and lingers — much like the performances that bring it to life.