Jordan Peele

He started his career as an actor, but while he was getting by, especially in comedy, he has found that he is much better at writing and directing. Jordan Peele has specialized in horror, in productions that include shots of humor while containing solid social reflections. He has plenty of talent.

Born on February 21, 1971, New Yorker Jordan Haworth Peele was abandoned by his black father, and was raised on his own by his white mother, Lucinda Williams, on the affluent Upper West Side. He studied Computer Science at The Calhoun School, in Manhattan, and later at Sarah Lawrence College, although he dropped out of the classroom before finishing, to form a comedy duo with his partner Rebecca Drysdale, with whom he wrote monologues.

After a successful tour of live performance venues, Jordan Peele signed for the comedy show Mad TV , broadcast on Fox and The CW. In this show he drew attention for his celebrity impersonations, including those of actors Morgan Freeman and Forest Whitaker . He made his brief screen debut as a nurse in Now It’s The Parents , opposite Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro . He played Barack Obama, in a series of TV sketches, and did some decent serious work, as Budge, an FBI agent demoted to the archives for failing to stop a bloody shootout, in the first season of Fargo .. But above all, he established himself as a popular face for American television viewers with the comedy series in which he played various characters Key and Peele , written and starring with his great friend Keegan-Michael Key . Both also starred in the ‘indie’ comedy Keanu , where they gave life to two cousins ​​who stay with a cat, which belongs to a dangerous drug dealer.

The good reviews made it possible for the most cutting-edge production company of current fanterror, BlumHouse, to give the green light to his first film as a director and screenwriter, Let me out , where the black Chris goes to meet the parents of his white girlfriend, but everything is so idyllic which looks suspicious. “I was inspired by a white girlfriend I had a while back, specifically remembering asking her if her parents knew I was black,” he recalls. “She said no and that scared me. Nothing bad happened, everything worked out, but I was terrified that I would have to see the change in her facial expression when they realized that it was not what they thought ”.

At first it seemed like a film without many pretensions, with the comedic touches typical of Peele and the producer, but it exuded enormous freshness, managed to create suspense, and incorporated a good dose of criticism about the residues of racism in current American society. The latter made it possible for it to become a surprise success. The Writers Guild awarded him the award for original screenplay of the year, and shortly after the young man achieved the feat of becoming the first African-American to win the Oscar for best screenplay not based on previous material, having also won nominations for directing and film. . At that point in his career, he decided to leave acting in the background. “Acting is not as much fun as directing,” he said in an interview with CBS.

Next, he scored another feat when he launched into producing Undercover in the KkKlansman , Ron Stallworth ‘s book in which he recounted his experience as a black agent who achieved an important victory to dismantle such a sinister organization. “As soon as this project came to me, I thought that the ideal director to bring it to the screen was Spike Lee .” Once finished, the film brought the author of Do what you must to the fore , in recent years in the doldrums, who went on to win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, the first of his career, if the honorary achieved in 2016 is excepted. .

He showed that in his debut the flute had not played by chance, in his second job as a director, Nosotros , with Lupita Nyong’o as the mother of a family that is persecuted by disturbing doubles of each of its components.He again includes a criticism of society, which is afraid of what is different, when the danger may lie within itself. Its original title, Us , can be translated as “we”, or interpreted as the initials of United States. It raised more than 86 million dollars worldwide in its premiere, a satisfactory figure considering that it only cost 20 million, which allows Jordan Peele not to worry because in Spain he has surpassed him… Pedro Almodóvar !

He prides himself on scaring audiences of all races. “We have done test screenings of my feature films, and there is a lot of similarity in how audiences of any origin see them,” she explains. “That’s the power of a good movie, that it gets a white person to see the world through the eyes of a black person, even for an hour and a half.”

As for his personal life, Jordan Peele began dating Chelsea Peretti in 2013 , an actress known for playing the police station administrator in the Brooklyn Nine-Nine series . In April 2016, the interpreter announced that they had both secretly married, and the following year she gave birth to the couple’s first child.

Hyperactive, Jordan Peele is constantly getting involved in new projects, which portends an even brighter future. He is the presenter of the new chapters of The Twilight Zone , the return of the most recognized fantasy series of all time. He’s about to resurrect the Candyman -spawned franchise as a producer , starring a ghost with a hook for a hand. Despite everything, he has found time to write Wendell & Will , about two demonic brothers who escape from the underworld, directed by Henry Selick , responsible for The Nightmare Before Christmas .