EXCLUSIVE: Jake Busey Talks About Playing Keyes In ‘The Predator’, Having A Bigger Role, and How The Character Was Meant To Link-Up To His Father’s Character In ‘Predator 2’

Continuing HN Entertainment’s recent chat with actor Jake Busey, our very own Nicholas Whitcomb brought up Jake’s recent work on Shane Black’s The Predator and his role as the son of Predator 2’s Keyes, who was played by his real-life father Gary Busey.

A lot from the earlier cuts were removed and in the end, some of those cuts included Jake’s character Keyes and Jake was kind enough to give his impressions/feelings about the character Keyes along with how he connected to Gary’s character from the original sequel.

HN: Your character in The Predator, obviously, you played your father’s son’s character in that universe. What did you personally want to bring to Keyes?

BUSEY: “I wanted to bring a couple of things to Keyes, one element that I don’t have to work at which is my genetics and the vibe of Keyes back. I’m the exact same age when we filmed it, as my dad was when he filmed Predator 2.”

“It was a very interesting slot that was filled, to be able to come back and do it. Interestingly enough, things might have been different had I been a better actor or more popular, I’ve had a lot of people talk to me about the role and how it fit into the storyline, and the potential for where it most likely would have been if it was a true follow-up to what my dad had been up to in Predator 2.”

“There’s kind of a group of people out there that have brought this up to me, and I thought it was interesting. But I did what was written, what was given to me. I just wanted to make him a very dedicated scientist, for the sake of wanting to learn more about intergalactic friendships. In the original version, the friendship of one of the Predators is a lot more developed, and you see that the whole point of me being there was to make reference to my dad. So they had initially, photographs of my dad in the clipboard when Olivia Munn is looking at the Predator and trying to figure out what this whole thing is, in the science lab when we meet her. So, there was a cool little tie-in, the test audiences got a real kick out of it, because it brought the whole Stargazer thing around, and then you see that I’ve dedicated my entire life to this because my dad’s character was killed by a Predator. And so I’m still leading the charge of finding these things and experimenting genetically with them.”

“There was another character that Edward James Olmos played, and that entire story arc was removed from the film, so it wound up being different than what was originally written. Still a good movie I think. But the Sean Keyes character was not as involved to the audience as he was in the script that went unseen. So I was happy when I signed onboard, I was like: ‘Oh this is great, we clearly see that Sean Keyes has been leading the fight and leading the pursuit that his dad Peter Keyes had’. So, it was a big circle of completion.”

HN: Right, there was a continuity between the series. 

BUSEY: “In all honesty, that was right after From Dusk Till Dawn and Shane Black took a big risk and pushed the studio to be allowed hire me, he really had to fight for the studio to sign off and let me be in it, based on this whole story arc. Somebody liked it, and they brought me on board, but ultimately they killed the whole thing. A lot of people have asked me: ‘I think it’s great that you were in it, but were you supposed to be related to your dad or was there supposed to be a tie-in?’.”

HN: I share some of the sentiments from other people, I really liked your character and was really hoping there would be more for him to do in the film.

You can see Jake Busey this July 4th on the third season of Netflix’s Stranger Things and will also have a role on the Bad Boys spinoff series L.A. Finest as well, which is led by Gabriella Union and Jessica Alba.