Mizuo Peck as Sacagawea in Night at the Museum (2006)

In Shawn Levy’s Night at the Museum, Mizuo Peck plays Sacagawea, the figure from the Lewis and Clark display who comes to life after dark beside Robin Williams’ Theodore Roosevelt. In the film’s world the two are a couple, which gives the museum’s most dignified exhibit a quiet romantic thread. The role is small, and Peck is still best known for it.

The question many viewers ask is whether Sacagawea was a real person. She was. Britannica describes her as a Shoshone woman who accompanied the expedition as an interpreter and traveled with them for thousands of miles from St. Louis to the Pacific Northwest. The film borrows an exhibit-sized version of that history. Her name is spelled several ways, including Sacagawea, Sacajawea and Sakakawea, depending on region and tradition.

The character inside the glass

The film was released in the United States on December 22, 2006. Levy directed from a screenplay by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, adapted from Milan Trenc’s 1993 children’s book. Ben Stiller plays Larry Daley, a new night guard at New York’s American Museum of Natural History. He finds that a magical Egyptian artifact brings the exhibits to life each night.

Sacagawea belongs to the calmer side of that ensemble. Surrounded by comic turns from Williams, Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan and Dick Van Dyke, Peck plays her with a steady, dignified presence. That suits the historical figure, whom lewisandclarktrail.com calls widely commemorated—and complex. A figure like that can easily be turned into a punchline, and the film avoids it.

Look and craft

The costume design on the production was by Renée April, and the hair department was led by Sherry Linder-Gygli. Their work was built to make a museum diorama figure read at a glance. Sacagawea has to look like a museum’s idea of history before she becomes a character in her own right. That puts the role’s challenge in the performance: Peck has to carry that formality, then show warmth when the character steps out of her display.

From New York stages to a franchise

Peck was born in New York City on August 18, 1977, and earned a BFA from SUNY Purchase. Before the film her work was mostly theater and television. At the Public Theater she performed in Suzan-Lori Parks’ 365 Days/365 Plays and in All’s Well That Ends Well with the Shakespeare Lab Program. She also appeared in Law & Order: Criminal Intent in 2006, the same year as the film.

The part brought her back twice. She returned as Sacagawea in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014), so she appeared in all three live-action films.

What came after

Away from the franchise, Peck’s credits include Almost in Love (2011) and A Case of You (2013). She narrated the television film This Is A.I. in 2018 and appeared in a 2019 episode of Madam Secretary, “Valor”, as a police officer.

The character has outlived the live-action films. In the animated Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again, released on Disney+ on December 9, 2022, Sacagawea was voiced by Kieran Sequoia. That film’s recast ensemble confirms that the museum’s Sacagawea has become a fixture of the series. For many viewers, though, she remains the figure Peck first played in 2006.

Header photo: David Shankbone / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0, modified: resized and blended with an AI-generated background. The person in the header is a real photo; only the background is AI-generated.