louder and a little more embold-
ened now than it was a couple
of years ago, but it’s all the exact
same sentiments. So that’s it,
man. Always.
I’m curious to hear what doors these
nominations did and didn’t open
up for you. Were you suddenly on
the lists for big studio movies?
SINGLETON I wasn’t offered every-
thing, but I also wasn’t sitting
waiting to be offered everything.
After I was nominated, Hollywood
didn’t know what to do with
me. I knew what I was going to do
myself, though. I had my next
movie [Poetic Justice] lined up with
Janet Jackson and Tupac starring
in it already. I learned from Francis
Coppola, who had given me some
advice. He said, “Try to write as
many of your works as possible so
stories. And until recently, it
was, “How can black movies make
money?” I don’t know if you
can call it racism, maybe it’s just
the business and the naivete about
who our audience was. People
have learned through Empire and
through Black Panther and
through Get Out.
SINGLETON Even though there’s
America and there’s black
America, there’s a pluralism in
entertainment right now.
Jordan’s film is not a full black
cast, but it’s a black movie and
it’s also not a black movie. It’s a
piece of popular culture.
JENKINS Jordan Peele is America.
(Laughter.)
SINGLETON He can go do a movie
with anybody. He can do a
movie with a full cast of different
types of people.that I had to work my way out
of to figure out how you make a
movie where a black man kills
a white family at the end of the
movie and white people are
going to be cheering with black
people. (Laughter.) And so a lot
of that was this idea of subvert-
ing what people think is about
to happen.You’re all laughing.
SINGLETON I’m imagining Jordan
pitching this shit. “I’m going
to kill a lot of white people in the
movie and everybody’s going to
be happy and it’s going to make
$300 million around the world.”
PEELE That was basically it, man.
(Laughs.)
DANIELS But you couldn’t have
known that it was going to be
this big ...
PEELE Oh, I didn’t know that
they’d even make it. (Laughs.) So,
when I finally got “this movie’s
getting made,” I was like, “OK,
OK, well, if it ever gets released,
which we’ll see, it’s going to
do something special.” But from
a business standpoint, I knew
if I gave the black audience the
movie that they’ve been yelling
for my whole life, that would
be big. And I knew that if I gave
the horror audience — another
loyal fan base — a movie that
they hadn’t seen in a while, a
throwback piece to some of film
lovers’ favorite horror movies,
then that would be something.
And then I just hoped everybody
else would come together.Lee, a few years ago, you said
as part of a THR Roundtable that
you hated when white people
wrote for black people. Does this
apply to directing as well? This
is a subject that’s come up this
season with Detroit, directed by
Kathryn Bigelow.
DANIELS I loved Detroit and I love
Kathryn Bigelow. Maybe that’s
not the woke answer, but we
are artists at the end of the day.
Who tells us what we can and
cannot do? The press? They plant
this shit. We are artists, and if
we fail, then we fail.that you have a singular voice.” So
that’s what I was trying to do, be a
writer-director. Then I got mired
up in the drama where I wanted to
actually explore different genres,
but I felt there was a ceiling of what
they wanted me to do. It’s inter-
esting though, because I’m doing
this [FX] show now, Snowfall. It’s
a popular show, and I could have
done it 20 years ago, but they said,
“Who wants to see Boyz N the
Hood on television every week?”
Now, everybody wants to see Boyz
N the Hood on television.
DANIELS If you really want to be
real, we could only do “black”
DANIELS And that’s the door that
he opened.Jordan, how conscious was that
decision to serve both a black and
non-black audience?
PEELE Spike did that a lot, too. But
I did feel like if this movie didn’t
work, it would really not work.
And because I come from comedy,
my whole pedigree is standing
onstage trying to get everybody
to laugh — everybody, not just
the smart people or the dumb
people or the white people or the
black people. So, the premise I
gave myself was this airtight boxThough Jenkins lost the best director Oscar last year to La La Land’s
Damien Chazelle, his film snagged best picture — after an envelope
mix-up, that is. “I didn’t make Moonlight for the awards conversation, and
I was shocked when it ended up there, the whole way,” he says now.THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 146 FEBRUARY 28, 2018