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“He makes my heart giggle,” says Keegan-Michael Key as he fondly describes the friendship he shares with Jordan Peele, who adds that “We’re each other’s funniest person.”
Such is the bond between the comedic duo, who voice the titular characters in Henry Selick’s “Wendell & Wild,” which streams on Netflix on Friday.
It’s been seven years since the conclusion of “Key & Peele,” the sketch comedy series that earned them well-deserved Emmys, and six since their movie comedy “Keanu.” This time, they reunite on a script co-written by Selick and Peele, who also produced the film.
Peele and Key were joined by Selick for an interview at a downtown hotel ahead of their film’s Toronto International Film Festival premiere.
“Wendell & Wild” is an animated tale about scheming demon brothers Wendell (Key) and Wild (Peele), who enlist the aid of 13-year-old Kat Elliot (Lyric Ross) — a tough teen with a load of guilt — to summon them to the Land of the Living. But what Kat demands in return leads to a bizarre and comedic adventure.
Oscar-nominated stop-motion filmmaker Selick, who helmed animated horror classics like “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Coraline,” has always intended to scare and not scar kids.
“I don’t want to actually put anything out there that’s going to ruin someone’s childhood. But I want to take it close to the edge and make them think and be terrified, remember it and then they love it. Horror films for kids is kind of what I do.”
From the delightfully wicked minds of Henry Selick (director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline) and Jordan Peele (Nope, Us, Get Out) comes the story of Kat (Lyric Ross), a troubled teen haunted by her past, who must confront her personal demons, Wendell & Wild (played by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele) to start a new life in her old hometown. Wendell & Wild also stars Angela Bassett, James Hong, and Ving Rhames.
Oscar winner Peele effectively changed the language of horror cinema with his critically acclaimed films “Get Out,” “Us” and, more recently, “Nope.” He became the first African American to win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay when he took home the prize in 2017 for “Get Out.”
“There has been a long era of whitewashed content for kids,” he said. “What I mean by that is something where horror, the scary, the real doesn’t quite exist. Henry’s past work, especially with ‘Coraline,’ really pushed these boundaries with horror animation and did it in a way where it works and it is scary for everyone, and it is still OK and good. That’s the spirit of the original Grimms fairy tales.”
Selick asked Peele to contribute as a voice artist, but Peele wanted to be more involved. For him, stop-motion animation is comfort food. He likes the idea of breathing life into the inanimate and the magic that comes from that has always drawn him to puppetry, a cornerstone of the horror genre as well.
“When (Selick) first reached out, he may have just thought that he was reaching out to an actor. But I think the secret I had was that I was not going to let him get away that easy,” Peele laughed. “So by the end of the thing, I think I sunk my talons in a little bit and said, ‘No, I’m actually a huge fan. This would be just a tremendous honour to help you do this, however I can.’ That’s kind of how that collaboration started.”
For Key, 51, it was about making the characters as dynamically opposed as they could be.
The two improvised in the recording studio. If Peele opted for a “deeper, syrupy thing,” Key would try for a “faster, quicker, frenetic, higher strident route. As sumptuous and as interesting as it was visually, I wanted it to be that auditorily as well.”
He added that there was “this wonderful peas in the pod aspect to their characters. They want the same thing and they kind of know they need each other at a deeper level. Yet, there’s still that great sibling dynamic.”
For Peele, 43, it felt like a reimagining of some of their iconic sketch characters while also incorporating the Vaudevillian stylings of classic comedy pairs like Abbott and Costello. “I think there’s also a connection to the Cedric and Levi characters” from “Key & Peele.”
Selick said the original story changed once Peele came on board. Notably, the actor wanted to see more characters who looked like him growing up, and pushed to make Kat the lead character and a young girl of colour.
“I just know that there are so many people out there who, if they got to see Kat, that character would really be a game changer for a lot of people as it would have been for me,” said Peele.
The strength of “Wendell & Wild” lies in its ability to provide an honest and eye-opening story that isn’t afraid to deliver hard truths about life.
The film also fit into the wheelhouse of Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, the company behind his commercially successful films. “Henry did a great thing accessing this idea that the bad guys in this story are the real bad guys in real life, the prison industrial complex, the people who make money off of incarceration,” Peele said. “For a young person to have access to that truth is very powerful. That is something that Monkeypaw is always striving to do; we don’t look at it as a message, we look at it like, ‘Let’s discuss the truth in our crazy story.’”
Selick, 69, agreed that truths are important to layering the story. “We had this crazy fantasy, comedy, horror, drama and brutal reality. This is the truth. It’s not the point of the film, but it’s anchored in something real.”
Both Key and Peele found resonance with their onscreen avatars. Key reckons he’s like the father driving a car while the kids are acting up in the back. “For me, that sense of being able to get flustered is something that I readily admit is a proclivity that I have. So that was somebody that I could mine and also a sense of trying to figure out what’s going on around me at any given time, especially because Wild is kind of mischievous and he’s up to something.”
Peele found toeing the line between good and evil relatable. “I think I’ve got a duality about me. There’s something about being an evil demon, but also like being kind of a kid, being sort of youthful and sweet, which Wild is. So there’s something about that duality I loved to explore.”
Selick was thoroughly impressed by the duo. “I just saw this phenomenal range that they had. They approach it both intellectually and just from deep soul, deep research and feeling … I mean they take these dangerous leaps and they always pull it off. The worst thing they ever did was really good and then it only goes up from there.”
What is the secret to Key and Peele’s friendship that brings out the best in them onscreen?
Key said it’s tough to describe: “There’s an ineffable quality, and sometimes it’s timing and luck that people just come across each other at a particular time in their lives. They come from similar places and they bring beautifully different perspectives.”
Peele smiled and filled in. “Whenever we get together, whether it’s been a day or a few months, it’s like there we are … We have a competition to make each other laugh and it’s just the same infectious thing that doesn’t really exist with anyone else. We’re just constantly trying to crack each other up.”
It sounds like the bromance is real between these two and “Wendell & Wild” was their perfect playground.
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