00:00 - Yeah, yeah, it's been fun.
00:01 This is fucking crazy, dude.
00:03 This is fucking crazy to me.
00:04 - There's a lot to unpack.
00:05 - Oh yes. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:07 - Right here, you are gonna witness
00:11 an absolute spectacle.
00:15 - So what happens next?
00:16 [upbeat music]
00:19 - I'm curious, did you have homework?
00:24 Did Jordan Peele give you specific reference points
00:26 as far as movies or books or anything?
00:28 - Yeah, yeah, so before the film,
00:29 I mean, I got the job right, and there was no synopsis.
00:33 The only thing that I heard was,
00:34 this is Jordan's most ambitious film yet,
00:37 and it's going to be massive.
00:38 That's the only thing I got,
00:40 and then he texted me a couple of movies to watch.
00:43 He told me to watch "Close Encounters of the Third Kind,"
00:45 "Jaws," "Alien," "No Country for Old Men,"
00:49 and "2001, A Space Odyssey."
00:52 So he sends me all those films to watch,
00:53 I'm like, okay, great, what the hell is he gonna do?
00:57 And I'm like, that's a weird concoction of films,
00:59 but I'm happy to watch them, that's great.
01:01 And then he never told me what the movie was about.
01:03 On Christmas Day, he just sends me the script
01:05 and says, "Merry Christmas," and then I started reading.
01:08 And yeah, that's how he told me.
01:10 - Nice.
01:10 [laughing]
01:11 Looking at the totality of Joop as a character,
01:14 this is a guy with considerable issues.
01:16 Like, he had a trauma in his past,
01:18 and he has clearly not really processed it,
01:21 and I'm just kind of just curious
01:22 how you just approach that aspect of the character
01:25 and the conversations you had with Jordan Peele about it.
01:26 - Yeah.
01:27 Well, Jordan really opened up the door for collaboration.
01:32 There was an idea of who Joop was on the page,
01:34 and then we really got to talking about him
01:35 and switched some things
01:37 and altered certain backstory things
01:39 and really found a motivation for him.
01:42 I think for me, what was the most interesting
01:44 is that in the end, I feel like Joop is in all of us.
01:48 What does trauma do in your life?
01:51 What does being told who you are at a young age do to you?
01:56 And that might be in child stardom,
01:59 but it kind of is also in all of us, too.
02:01 So I thought about that a lot.
02:04 - Was being a child star
02:05 something that you specifically talked about
02:07 and just kind of looked into?
02:09 - Yeah, you can look into it.
02:10 I think we have, it was interesting,
02:13 when we were making the film,
02:13 a lot of documentaries were coming out about that.
02:16 And there's obviously the storied careers that we all know.
02:21 I think for me, what I wanted to focus on the most
02:26 was really just the way in which
02:28 our kind of selves are formed.
02:32 Like, who are we?
02:33 Are we who we want us, ourselves to be?
02:37 Or are we kind of like the sum
02:38 of other people's projections onto us?
02:41 And what does that do to your life?
02:44 And what does that do to your motivations?
02:46 And who are you in the end?
02:47 So yeah, it was a very existential, isolated exercise.
02:52 - Well, I think a fascinating extension of that
02:55 is the Gordy's Home Museum that he keeps secret.
02:58 Which, I mean, Jordan Peele is so great with details.
03:00 And I'm just curious, like, going through that museum,
03:03 did you have a favorite detail?
03:05 - Yeah, I mean, I think there's so many things.
03:08 The fact that he holds all these epitaphs
03:13 of his time there.
03:16 The fact that he owns them still.
03:18 The fact that he has them.
03:19 Did he get it from the very beginning?
03:22 Or did he have to search for it over the years
03:24 and acquire them?
03:26 It's, you know, I think even just the secret compartment
03:31 of it all, you know, there's this,
03:34 all of Jupiter's claim feels like a big fever dream.
03:37 You know, it's really interesting.
03:39 - You guys wanna tell me what's going on?
03:40 - Hell no.
03:41 - When you actually first auditioned for the role of Angel,
03:43 you actually had a different interpretation
03:45 of the character than Jordan Peele originally had.
03:47 And he ended up changing the role for you.
03:50 I'm just curious kind of what the role was
03:51 before you came aboard and kind of your interpretation
03:54 of it.
03:54 - Yeah, the first thing that he wrote, I guess,
03:57 and I just found this out yesterday.
03:58 I didn't really know the details of Angel
04:00 'cause it was pretty simplified.
04:02 It was like, it used to be named Artie
04:05 and he was just a kid that was clutch, something like that.
04:08 And he worked at a retail store.
04:11 So I just saw that and then it just seemed like
04:14 this kid was kind of happy-go-lucky
04:16 and I found out he's very nerdy.
04:17 Like very like super like nerdy in the sense
04:19 of like quirky nerdy.
04:21 I was like, oh my gosh, I'm a tech quiz.
04:23 And then, so I just found that out yesterday, funny enough,
04:27 but I just never saw it that way
04:29 when I initially got the script or the sides, actually.
04:32 I just thought about it.
04:33 I brought it to a real place.
04:34 Jordan's very good at keeping his films grounded
04:37 and you just think those humans are alive on earth.
04:39 So usually when I walk into a retail store,
04:41 no one wants to be there.
04:42 No one's really happy to be there.
04:43 They're kind of just like, yeah, what do you need?
04:45 All right, cool.
04:46 Scan that.
04:47 Great.
04:48 All right, you need something else?
04:49 Cool, do it.
04:50 So I kind of just went into it with that intention
04:53 where I'm like, this is kind of the feel that I get.
04:56 And he thought that was so funny,
04:57 kind of this dude who's over it.
04:59 And yeah, that made him laugh quite a bit.
05:01 So I'm so glad that I entered it with that.
05:05 And I just wanted to attack it differently
05:07 than I feel like others would.
05:08 There's another spin that I did where it was just,
05:10 and I shout out to my reader, Chibukai Muche,
05:13 who's also an actor.
05:13 We worked together to kind of conjure up this idea
05:16 of like, let's speak in code or something.
05:18 Like, I'm running a drug operation through crypto,
05:21 and let's just do something crazy
05:22 so there's just this tense energy.
05:24 And that ended up working, and yeah,
05:26 now I'm here today, which is crazy.
05:28 There's something out here.
05:31 Maybe you're in a UFO hot spot.
05:32 [EXPLOSION]
05:33 [LAUGHTER]
05:35 And he is such a detail-oriented guy.
05:37 Everything in his movies is just so spectacularly layered,
05:40 and it's really what impresses me about his films.
05:42 I'm curious if that was something that influenced just
05:45 your character building, and also if there was just
05:47 anything either in your character,
05:49 on set, in the costuming that you found as a detail that
05:52 just blew your mind.
05:53 Yeah, I feel like I'm usually really detailed as an actor
05:57 so I can relate with Jordan in that sense,
05:58 not to say that I'm on the level of Jordan Bale or nothing.
06:00 You know what I'm saying?
06:01 [INAUDIBLE]
06:02 Don't eat me up for that one.
06:03 But yeah, I just felt like the way
06:07 that we work complemented each other very well.
06:10 I love those details.
06:11 I love hashing things out in that sense,
06:13 and we had a lot of conversations
06:15 of building this character.
06:16 And wardrobe was a big thing.
06:18 We were doing a lot of fittings.
06:20 Originally, I'd walk in, and it was kind of the nerdy fits.
06:23 And it was like, OK, this is kind of changing
06:25 the way I play it, though.
06:26 And then I think the producers realized that.
06:28 Shout out to Ian Cooper as well.
06:29 He was very hands-on when it came
06:31 to making sure Angel's wardrobe was crafted,
06:34 and the music I was listening to was crafted.
06:36 And that's where we kind of got this metal
06:38 feel of this grungy kid that's just kind of mad
06:43 at the world type of deal.
06:44 So yeah, it was very detailed, and I
06:46 appreciate the details, because that's
06:47 what I'd like as a performer.
06:48 I'm serving a character.
06:49 You know, I'm not serving me.
06:50 I'm serving that.
06:51 And as much material as they give you,
06:53 all the more to work from, right?
06:54 Yeah, exactly.
06:55 Exactly.
06:56 So really crafting the backstory was key for me,
06:58 because I'm like, why is he in this space?
07:00 What got him here?
07:01 And that really crafted all the intention that I led with.
07:04 And I am curious.
07:06 Did you guys talk about the shoe at all?
07:08 Because it's an interesting mystery.
07:09 Yeah.
07:10 What did you think about the shoe?
07:11 I honestly don't know.
07:13 Like, I have to think about it more.
07:14 I'm curious just-- yeah.
07:15 You know, the first interview I had yesterday,
07:18 I flipped that question back on to him about the shoe.
07:21 And he said something that I was like, whoa.
07:23 He was like, I think the shoe represents
07:25 that anything is possible.
07:28 And I was like, I like that.
07:31 I like that a lot.
07:31 Yeah, I'm going to use that one.
07:32 There you go.
07:33 Nice.
07:34 Thumbs up!
07:36 Should I do it?
07:37 Thumbs up!
07:39 [MUSIC PLAYING]
07:42 [BLANK_AUDIO]
Comments