Here's Where You Know The Cast Of Nope From

Jordan Peele's hotly-anticipated third film "Nope" has featured a cryptic marketing campaign that obscures what the movie is about. The character posters feature the main cast looking up at the sky with a combination of fear and amazement; the trailer teases strange disappearances taking place on a horse ranch, and that's about all most people knew before seeing the film. While the film's most famous actors feature in the trailer, the cast is much bigger than the advertising lets on. Accordingly, many people who see the film may be surprised by who's in it, and audiences may find themselves wondering why the cast looks so familiar.

As with his previous hits "Get Out" and "Us," Peele has also slipped some social commentary into his film. "The part of African-American history that this addresses more than anything is the spectacle-isation of Black people, as well as the erasure of us, from the industry, from many things," he told Empire, adding that the film is in part about the erasure from history of the Black man who rode a horse in the very first moving picture.

To build out his cast, Peele has selected some of Hollywood's biggest up-and-coming stars, some actors he's worked with before, and some familiar faces who audiences will likely recognize but have trouble immediately placing. To help you out, read on to find out where you know the cast of "Nope."

So you've seen "Nope" — or just the trailer — and you're wondering why the actor who plays Emerald Haywood looks so familiar. Baby, this is Keke Palmer! She first lit up screens in "Barbershop 2: Back in Business," but she broke out a few years later as a precocious spelling-bee hopeful in "Akeelah and the Bee." Palmer played a young wordsmith from South Los Angeles who went all the way to the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and she more than held her own opposite acting heavyweights like Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne. Looking back on her role fifteen years later, Palmer told Entertainment Weekly that she was excited about the part even though she was a child. "I don't think I understood the depths and the nuances of the impact that it would have on my community," she reflected.

Since rocking to stardom, Palmer has been a consistent presence in culture. She played the title role in Nickelodeon's hit show "True Jackson, VP," starred on Ryan Murphy's "Scream Queens" as Zayday Williams, led "Hustlers," and has spawned numerous iconic memes. She introduced "the gag is..." to the world, and she famously didn't recognize Vice President Dick Cheney while hooked up to a lie detector. She's a judge on "Legendary," a voice actor on the reboot of "The Proud Family," and she starred on MTV's "Scream" television show. In other words... you know Keke Palmer. No need to say "sorry to this woman!"

One of the first glimpses audiences got of "Nope" was a picture of Steven Yeun in a cowboy hat, a red jacket, and a bolo tie, staring up at the sky in wonder. Though plot details were kept under wraps up through the film's release — and we won't be spoiling things here! — Yeun teased some basics while appearing on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!." "I can say I play a character named Ricky 'Jupe' Park, who is a former child star, and he owns his own theme park," the actor said carefully.

Fans likely recognize Yeun from his starring role as Glenn on "The Walking Dead," a part he played for the hit zombie show's first six seasons. After he left the show, Yeun made the leap to film; he starred in the action-horror film "Mayhem" as well as Bong Joon-ho's "Okja" before finding critical acclaim in "Burning." In 2020, Yeun was nominated for an Oscar for his starring role in "Minari," where he played the father of a Korean family who try to make a life for themselves on a farm in rural Kansas. This made Yeun the first Asian-American to be nominated for Best Actor. While speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, though, Yeun pushed back against the label, preferring to instead just be called "an actor." Still, he allowed, "It's cool that we get to establish new ground and that young Asian American kids can feel like this is possible for them, too."

Osgood "Oz" Perkins plays a character named Fynn Bachman in "Nope," but before release, few details were available about what the role involves, exactly. Audiences who see the film may be wondering why they recognize Perkins, and we have two words for you: "Legally Blonde." In the classic 2001 comedy, Perkins played "Dorky David," a nerdy character to whom Reese Witherspoon's Elle Woods lends a bit of social cachet.

He got his start in acting thanks to his famous father; Perkins is the child of Anthony Perkins, better known as Norman Bates from "Psycho." Oz stepped into his father's shoes in "Psycho II," playing Norman in flashbacks, and it seems he caught a bite of the horror bug. In addition to his acting career, he directs; he's been behind the camera for terrifying films like "The Blackcoat's Daughter," Netflix's "I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House," and the 2020 film "Gretel & Hansel." Oz and Jordan Peele worked together in the past on an episode of "The Twilight Zone" — he directed the episode Peele starred in!

"For me, the horror genre has always been about sort of what we don't know, and what we can't see, and what we can't fully understand, and what's coming for us," he told Consequence. That means he fits right in with "Nope," a movie whose marketing kept its cards very close to its chest in a way few films do these days.

In "Nope," soap opera legend Donna Mills plays a character named Bonnie Clayton. Mills is best known for her role on "Knots Landing," a primetime spinoff of "Dallas" that aired from 1979 to 1993. She played Abby Ewing throughout the show's run, a scheming character the actor was desperate to play. "Once I heard about Abby, I wanted the part so badly in order to get away from all the goody-two-shoes roles I was doing," she told SoapHub almost two decades after the show's finale. However, playing a character like that on television came at a cost; she admitted that sometimes people were "standoffish" to her in real life. "I would try to be nice to them and I couldn't figure out why they were being so cold. I finally figured out they thought I would steal their husbands or do something nefarious," she said.

Since "Knots Landing" ended, Mills has kept busy on a number of other shows. She made appearances on "Melrose Place" and "Nip/Tuck," and she even showed up in "Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens." She joined the cast of "General Hospital" in 2014 as Madeline Reeves, and the role finally netted the soap legend a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Performer. "My heart just went... whoop!" she told Michael Fairman backstage, moments after her win. "At this stage in my life, in my career, for this to happen is just amazing to me."

Michael Wincott's character has the coolest name on the "Nope" cast list, if you ask us; he's playing someone named "Antlers Holst." He's not the most-recognizable member of the cast list, though, but fans who think he looks familiar may know him from a number of roles in big films. In the 2002 adaptation of "The Count of Monte Cristo," for example, he starred as Dorleac, the warden of the prison where Jim Caviezel's Edmond Dantes was locked up. He has a memorable death scene in the film, drowning during Dantes' infamous escape from jail.

Wincott has been acting for a long time, having starred in Oliver Stone's "Talk Radio" all the way back in 1989, when he was just 30 years old. In a Rolling Stone profile that previewed then-upcoming roles in films like "Born on the Fourth of July" and "Bloodhounds of Broadway" (opposite Madonna!), the young actor talked about not wanting to get too complacent in his budding career. "My worst work happens when I get obedient," he insisted, telling the reporter, "I usually get called in on things that have a certain degree of intensity to them." His plan for himself decades ago seems to have worked out well; "Nope" is a lot of things, and "intense" is definitely on the list.

Alex Hyde-White plays a character called Grizz in Jordan Peele's "Nope," but as he hasn't done press for the film, we won't be spoiling who "Grizz" really is. Instead, let's talk about where you might recognize Hyde-White from! He's had a long career in Hollywood, including in films like "Pretty Woman" and "Catch Me If You Can," and he played the younger version of Sean Connery's character in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" flashbacks, opposite River Phoenix as Indy.

However, Hyde-White's most impactful role almost wasn't seen by anyone. Relatively early in his career, he won the then-coveted role of Mr. Fantastic in Roger Corman's ill-fated 1994 adaptation of the beloved Marvel Comics superhero team. However, the low-budget movie never saw an official release. It wasn't until many years later that bootleg footage made its way online and won the actor a legion of fans. 

He now appears at conventions on the basis of the cult-favorite role, and he told The Hollywood Reporter that he was grateful for all the attention the film brought long after its intended release. He also mentioned that he disagrees with people who say "it never should have been made." He clarified, "I'm really glad it was because, you know, it's like creeping ivy: You can trim it, you can cut it, you can even think you've destroyed it — but you go away for six months, and it's taken over the side of the house."

Eddie Jemison plays Buster in "Nope," but he hasn't done press for the film, so we won't give away many details beyond that. If Jemison seems familiar, it's likely from his starring roles in the "Ocean's Eleven" franchise — the first of which was, incredibly, his first major film role. He played Livingston Dell in all three Steven Soderbergh heist movies, the surveillance and tech guy on the team. Jemison told The AV Club years later that he was intimidated by the people he worked with, recalling that at first, he was confident. "What I didn't count on," he recalled, was that "as soon as you're in a room with Brad Pitt and George Clooney, Don Cheadle and Carl Reiner and Elliott Gould, all those guys — suddenly all the weight of their combined greatness made me very anxious."

The films launched his career, though, and he has since carved out a nice career for himself on numerous television shows. He played Ronnie Haxon (the new husband of Anne Heche's character) on 21 episodes of HBO's raunchy hit "Hung," and he starred as Dr. Stanley Stohl, Chief of Emergency Medicine, on 19 episodes of "Chicago Med." He also recurred for several seasons as the villainous Mr. Boss on The CW's cult hit "iZombie," a role he enjoyed. He told The AV Club, "What I love about old Mr. Boss is all these awful awful things are done in his name, but he's pretty breezy."