Tampa native Owen Teague stars in new "Planet of the Apes" movie

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TAMPA, Fla. - The newest summer blockbuster, ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ hits the silver screen on Friday with a familiar face in Tampa starring. 

Tampa's own Owen Teague plays the main character in the latest installment of the iconic Planet of the Apes series, spanning all the way back to the 1960s. 

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Teague stars as the chimp Noa, one of the main protagonists in the film. He chatted with FOX 13's Linda Hurtado on Friday about his Tampa roots and the new film. 

The 25-year-old actor is an alumnus of Blake High School, and he performed on stage at New Tampa and a theater in Sarasota. 

Teague talked about how fun it was to use a motion capture suit for the film.

"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 said. "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 said he went to an orangutan and chimpanzee sanctuary in Wauchula called the Center for Great Apes where he spent a week learning about the animals' behavior. 

"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."

The movie is out now in theaters. 

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