Godzilla vs Kong Star Kaylee Hottle Dies at 18

Kaylee Hottle, the actress who played 'Jia' in Godzilla vs Kong, has died at age 18. 

Hottle passed in a car crash on the morning of July 21 in , her father Joshua Hottle revealed to TMZ. 

Joshua also broke the news with followers in a livestream titled 'I am taking a flight that I never would like to take,' in which he described in American Sign Language having to travel to s to claim his daughter's body.

According to TMZ, Hottle said he received a phone call from officials telling him his daughter's heart had stopped on the way to the hospital not long after her learned about the accident.  

Before landing her role in Godzilla vs Kong, Hottle, a deaf actress, did commercials, including a public service message for the live video messaging app used by the hard of hearing community, Glide. 

She was cast as Jia in Godzilla vs Kong in 2021, before returning to the role in Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire in 2024. 

Kaylee received help from her parents and another individual to translate the script into ASL but faced some troubles.

'I was fine with memorizing the script and signing my lines, but the tough part was signing out the "spoken" parts because we had to change it, and sometimes they’d tell us it was wrong but they didn’t understand that ASL changes almost everything,' she said during a 2021 interview with The Daily Moth. 

'Because the interpreter said what I said. The producer and director would sometimes say “Don’t say that” and want me to follow the script, but the signs for that sentence would be different in ASL.

'There was one instance where there was a misunderstanding between us related to the ASL translation, which caused a delay, but they later understood.'

Kaylee also taught her castmates how to sign: 'Teaching the cast how to sign. They had never interacted with a deaf person before. I had to explain how to sign and use facial expressions. That was the hard part, but when they picked up on it, it was fine. I didn’t really have challenges, they were very accommodating. Some of the workers learned how to sign.'

Kaylee's character and Kong used sign language to communicate with one another.

'Because Kong and my character had a special bond. We signed with each other. Not with Godzilla, it was different. Then later we met,' she said.