Jordan Peele never thought ‘Get Out’ would be made.
The 38-year-old actor and filmmaker is currently being praised for his directorial debut and has received continuous nominations, and on Wednesday night (07.02.18), the film won the Best Picture at the African American Film Critics Association Awards.
But Peele admitted the film only started as a "fun project" but once he started getting heavily into the writing process he knew the horror was becoming an "allegory for slavery".
He said: "It started as a fun project. I didn’t know it was ever going to get made. I’d go home, smoke a little bit of weed and I would write.
"I would watch this movie in my head, this movie that I wish somebody would write for me to watch and that was it. I knew that something scary needed to happen. I knew that in some ways my movie was an allegory for slavery. But I also knew that at this point, the structure of the film, it needed to take us on a ride because it’s the horror genre.
"I wrote this scene in a very vulnerable state. I put my worst fears out there and onto the page and when I was finished writing that scene, that experience of writing this movie changed. I realised what this movie was about. I realised that slavery was not something of the past. The sunken place to me, shouted to me, that in today’s time, in modern time, we have black men and women abducted and put in dark holes.
"We have our freedoms taken away … I realised at that point that there were people being locked up and taken out of the world and taken from their families for holding less weed than I was smoking while I was writing this movie."
Peele – who is famous for working with Keegan-Michael Key in sketch show ‘Key & Peele’ – also realised that there have not been many horror movies made specifically for African American audiences, with black characters often relegated to supporting roles in franchises like ‘A Nightmare On Elm Street’.
He said: "I used to go to the movie theatre and watch horror movies an you know black people, we yell s**t at the screen.
"I’d go watch like a Freddy [Kruger] movie and you’d hear people saying s**t like ‘Oh, bitch, get of the house’, or, ‘No. no, no … don’t walk backwards!’ or, ‘You’re white – call the cops!’
"I got it in my head that there was a missing piece of the conversation. There was a film that we were asking for, begging for that wasn’t there for us. We are a loyal horror film audience so I wanted to fill that gap. I wanted to fill that void and the best part of watching ‘Get Out’ is hearing black people in the theatre."
Jordan Peele never thought Get Out would get made
