Starring in “Nope” was an easy yes for Daniel Kaluuya.
The Oscar-winning actor was excited to team up again with director Jordan Peele in the freaky new thriller after their first movie together, 2017′s race satire “Get Out,” proved to be his breakthrough role.
“We just got back in step very quickly,” Kaluuya told the Daily News.
“We mentioned [reuniting] on ‘Get Out.’ We did have a conversation about it,” Kaluuya said. “It was like, ‘Yo, I really enjoyed this experience, if you’ve got anything.’ And we spoke after ‘Get Out’ came out and said, ‘Yo, let’s keep building.’ When it just came out, I’d come back to L.A. and I sat down with him, and we kind of spoke about that. It’s just when the right project comes.”
That right project came five years later with “Nope,” a science fiction horror epic about two Hollywood horse ranchers who try to capture definitive proof of aliens on camera after a mysterious terror appears in the sky.
In theaters Friday, the film stars Kaluuya as the mild-mannered rancher O.J. and Keke Palmer as his fame-obsessed sister, Emerald.
“It’s to be experienced. It’s not really to be described,” Kaluuya said. “It’s a very unique, original experience from a very unique, original filmmaker with a very unique, original perspective. It’s for audiences. It’s to be genuinely enjoyed. It’s everything you would want from a summer blockbuster, essentially. There’s suspense, fear, terror, action, joy, laughter, fun.”
The London-born Kaluuya, 33, was an up-and-coming actor when Peele cast him as the lead in “Get Out,” a horror film about a Black man whose introduction to his white girlfriend’s family comes with a shocking revelation.
The performance earned Kaluuya the first Oscar nomination of his career and established him as a Hollywood leading man.
“He cast me in my first lead role in a film,” Kaluuya said of Peele. “And at certain points in my career, he’s given me a word, and given me some advice that’s been really helpful.”
Kaluuya won his first Oscar last year for his portrayal of the Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton in “Judas and the Black Messiah.” He also starred in the 2018 superhero blockbuster “Black Panther” as the warrior W’Kabi, but confirms he was unable to return for the upcoming sequel due to scheduling conflicts with “Nope.”
Production for “Nope” took place last summer in Southern California, where Kaluuya says the intense heat provided some real-life frights on set.
“Me and Jordan got heatstroke during filming ’cause it was that intense,” Kaluuya said. “Sometimes when we are talking, and devising, and talking about character, we’d just stand there. We don’t even realize how much time’s gone past. For like 10 minutes, we’re just in the sun at 12 p.m. It was around that time that we kind of both checked out and we had to sit down for a couple of hours.”
“Nope” is the third horror movie to be written, directed and produced by Peele, who rose to fame as part of a sketch-comedy duo with Keegan-Michael Key. His second film, “Us” starring Lupita Nyong’o, came out in 2019.
Peele’s previous movies earned acclaim for weaving bigger-picture ideas about the real world into his suspenseful stories, and Kaluuya believes he did so again by exploring exploitation through “Nope.”
“It’s just seeing, basically, how everyone is selling and using themselves, or having to break something of themselves or of that being in order to make money off it, and document it and capture it,” Kaluuya said. “It’s a lot about capturing and what that means. Sometimes capturing is amazing, but sometimes capturing actually equates to you not being present.”
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