Child stars: Where are they now? In the case of Tonka, the chimpanzee who starred in the 1997 film Buddy when he was only a wee chimpie lad, we literally don’t know. Now, his former colleague Alan Cumming is offering a $10,000 reward for the missing chimp. In February, PETA put out a call for Tonka, “whose last known whereabouts were inside the former Missouri Primate Foundation (MPF) facility, a breeding outfit that previously rented out baby chimpanzees for events and sold them to private homes and movie exhibitors and was known as ‘Chimparty.’†A group of chimps was scheduled to be rescued from the misleadingly named facility in July 2021, but the exotic-animal broker handing over the chimps claimed — but could not prove in court — that Tonka had “died.â€
It sounds like a very dark true-crime sideshow to Tiger King, and the plot thickened on April 28, with Tonka’s Buddy co-star Cumming pledging a $10,000 reward for anyone who can find the primate. “During the months we filmed together, baby Tonka and I became good friends, playing and grooming each other and just generally larking about,†Cumming told Variety. “It’s horrible to think he might be in a cage in a dark basement somewhere or have met some other fate, so I’m appealing to whoever knows what has become of him to please come forward and claim the reward.†In 2017, Cumming had called for the rescue of Tonka and his fellow inmates from the Missouri facility. “As an old friend of Tonka’s, I respectfully ask that you allow him and the chimpanzees at MPF to be sent to accredited sanctuaries where they can enjoy some semblance of the life that nature intended for them,†he wrote at the time. PETA has also offered a $10,000 reward for info on Tonka, bringing the total to $20,000 for whoever can help Cumming get to the bottom of what happened to his friend.