Early Life
Jordan Peele was born on February 21, 1979, in New York City. He was raised by his white mother, his father was absent from his life and passed away in 1999. Growing up he was a very introverted child in love with sci-fi and fantasy. No one really believed that Peele was biracial, they thought that both of his parents were black and he was lying about his mother being white. Peele’s dilemma with his identity would later be reflected in his films.
“I’d been taught from an early age that I was in the ‘other’ category on the standardized tests. You know, I had to go down the checklist – Caucasian, African-American, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, and then, you know, at the bottom is another. So, you know, very early on I was taught, in a way, that I was somehow this anomaly,” Peele told NPR.
Career
After graduating from high school, and enrolling in college to study puppetry he decided to drop out in 1999 to pursue a career in comedic improv. In 2003 he starred on Mad TV until 2009, and founded Key and Peele in 2012, the show has won awards for comedy and two Primetime Emmy Awards.
In 2017 Peele retired from acting and decided to go into directing and producing instead. His first work was Get Out (2017), a horror film about an interracial couple. The male lead has to leave a good impression on his girlfriend’s parents, who don’t seem to be on board with the relationship. With many twists and turns along the way, it is one of the darkest and most disturbing images in a horror film. The film won awards for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards, which made history. Peel was the first black person to be nominated for this award along with (the award for) Best Picture and Best Director.
“I wanted to be Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton, Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and Hitchcock. I’d wanted to be a director since 13, and horror and suspense thrillers were the most powerful genres to me,” he told the deadline.
Other films that Peele took part in creating include BlacKkKlansmar (2018), Us (2019), Candyman (2021), Nope (2022), and Wendell & Wild (2022).
Almost all of these movies have to do with the representation of black people, the way they are treated, and make very interesting horror films that are scary. Unlike other horror films, Peele discusses racism and social issues while the characters unravel the true intentions of the wrongdoer.
Sources - https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/03/15/520130162/get-out-sprung-from-an-effort-to-master-fear-says-director-jordan-peele#:~:text=I'd%20been%20taught%20from,somehow%20this%20anomaly.%20… https://deadline.com/2017/05/jordan-peele-get-out-disruptors-interview-news-1202094400/ https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/peele-jordan-1979/#:~:text=Comedian%20turned%20movie%20director%20Jordan,life%20before%20dying%20in%201999 Photo credits https://www.vulture.com/article/get-out-oral-history-jordan-peele.html https://prabook.com/web/jordan.peele/3745714
