Jordan Peele on Us, his fears and why he loves horror

After winning an Oscar for his first, highly successful movie, the in-demand filmmaker reveals his own fears.

Fresh off the back of an Oscar win, Jordan Peele chose to make Us, a horror movie out in cinemas this week.

The comedian-cum-filmmaker, 40, made enormous waves two years ago with his debut movie Get Out , a parable about modern-day racism in America.

He picked up the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, adding to his Emmy haul for his work on sketch series Key & Peele.

Jumping back behind the camera so soon after a pop cultural moment meant that everyone would be watching Peele’s next move closely.

Us, starring Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke, is a thrilling experience, a horror movie with a brain, about an American family haunted by their doppelgangers.

To mark its release, news.com.au caught up with Peele to chat about why he loves horror, his fears and what he’s trying to say with Us.

When you were looking for your next project after Get Out, what drew you to Us?

I wrote Get Out at a time when I felt like there was a certain form of expression that needed to happen and that wasn’t happening, and that was about race. And then I found a couple of years later, after making the film, the movie came out at a moment when it felt like the audience was ready to have that conversation.

Jordan Peele says he’s scared of doppelgangers (Photo by Greg Allen/Invision/AP)

The realisation for me that we were at a time in which we tend to point the finger outward as opposed to looking at our own part, in the evil and the problems of the world, told me there was a horror movie to be made about that. And I’ve always been afraid of the idea of doppelgangers.

You mentioned at Us’s premiere at SXSW that it plays on the fear of the other — what if the monsters are just us? When I watched Us, I also saw this commentary about the politics of envy or social inequality, is that stuff you intentionally layered in as well?

Oh yeah. I looked at this one from many angles. Because by definition, the word “us” can mean many different things. It can mean many different factions the viewer belongs to.

One of the things that really emerged for me is this idea of privilege and this idea that those of us that are born in a scenario in which we have access to education and healthcare and shoes, we take for granted the people who don’t and the people who have to suffer and who have suffered so we can have those privileges.

As a conversation, I feel like it’s important and missing most of the time.

What do you think a movie like Us adds to that conversation?

Even having that conversation is a feat that I think is powerful. If we talk about these things, we’re are better equipped to deal with them, and we can try to avoid great atrocity in the future.

Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex and Lupita Nyong'o all played duel roles in the film (Claudette Barius/Universal Pictures via AP)

My mission in these films is always to, first and foremost, entertain, and give people a wild ride. Give them a ride where they can experience fears and cheers and laughs and tears, and through those cathartic moments the audience will be left to process “why did that affect me, why did that get my back up, why was I crying there?”

And that’s the mission. I’ve always been a believer that story and parable are the most effective means of change because they can Trojan horse, and they’re fun.

Did you ever consider making Us or tell this story through a genre that wasn’t horror? Are you interested in exploring other genres in your filmmaking?

No, not really. I think horror is just my favourite genre because it is exploring a very powerful and dangerous emotion, which is fear. And when we don’t face our fears in the right way, I think we’re capable of evil — whether it’s on purpose or by accident.

So, I’m fascinated with the emotion of fear because I was a very fearful child and I think fear can be something used to protect ourselves and our own, but it can also in turn be used to demonise, criminalise and oppress others.

Peele with his leading stars at an Us premiere (Photo by Johannes EISELE / AFP)

By making these movies, do you overcome your own fear?

You know, I’ve never completely overcome my fears. But it is a great help and I think mainly because I’m conversing with myself, I’m talking, I’m facing it.

The scariest thing about fear is that it’s so unpleasant. We put it off and anything we put off and stuff down deep explodes in negative ways. By making these movies, I am, every day, asking myself what scares me and why and that has a great effect on my psyche.

You’ve said you’re scared of doppelgangers — what did you learn about them through this process?

I did a good amount of research on the idea of the shadow self and doppelgangers from different mythologies and different cultures and it does tend to be a universal piece of expression within these mythologies.

Doppelgangers are almost always some form of an omen of one’s own death and create a sense of foreboding disaster or dread. That can’t be a coincidence.

Peele on the set of Get Out

I did a lot of research into theories of synchronicity and how things link up in different cultures and different people will have amazing coincidences happen in their lives. That speaks to me in my process, in how I create a story and the screenplay I’m putting together, trying to weave the themes into a structure that works.

A good amount of my process is watching the story take over and the ideas and coincidences that link up themselves. It’s a little bit of a dance for me when I’m putting together these stories. Sometimes the powers-that-be, the collective subconscious, takes over.

After the level of engagement Get Out inspired, are you hoping Us will receive the same sort of attention?

Sure, but, very early on in this project, I realised that I had to be content making a story I was happy with. Both Get Out and this are my favourite movies that I haven’t seen.

That allows me to walk into the process with a certain confidence that not everyone is going to like every movie, not everyone is going to like my movie, this is for myself and the other people who share some of these emotions and ideas and the same aesthetic appreciation.

And so because I’ve achieved that for myself, it’s minimised the sting of potential failure.

Us is in cinemas from Thursday, March 28.

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