If you don’t recognize Danie Kaluuya from “Black Mirror,” you probably remember him from Jordan Peele’s blockbuster directorial debut “Get Out,” which changed the game by spawning a whole spate of social thrillers in its wake and even encouraging college professors to build courses around the film. Kaluuya plays Chris, a guy who visits his white girlfriend’s family home only to discover a house of unexpected horrors. So how did Peele find him?
“It was ‘Black Mirror,’ Peele told Deadline in 2018 when he and Kaluuya discussed the film together. “I had this immediate feeling of, how is this guy so good and I haven’t seen his work before? The way I can best describe it is, he showed the full range of the two opposite sides of Chris. Different characters, different emotions. The character goes from being quiet, introspective, subdued, with a relatable sense of compliance to the system, and then by the end he explodes and is primal. In the ‘Black Mirror’ episode, he showed it in just monologue, this primal, frugal, passionate monologue that just feels like a Greek tragedy. And so I knew I needed somebody who could do both of those things, and either one of those, he does better than anyone else.”
Peele said that while he personally knew Kaluuya was the man for the role, he needed to bring him in to audition anyway, and he performed the now-famous “hypnosis scene.” According to Peele, it was unbelievable. “It was a beautiful moment, it was undeniable,” he recalled. “You could see he doesn’t do anything for the sake of doing something. His specificity in what he chooses to do, you could tell he was into some good, interesting s***. One of the things that really stood out to me was, he understood the risk of ‘Get Out’ and instead of it pushing him away, it drew him closer. I felt like we had this bond of like, holy s***, they’re going to let us make this movie? We’re going to do things you’re not supposed to do in this movie and it could go very wrong.”
The rest is literally cinematic history, and it’s safe to say that nothing went wrong once Peele and Kaluuya teamed up. Not only did the film score Oscar nominations for Kaluuya, the overall film, and nods for Peele for directing and writing (the latter of which he won in the Best Original Screenplay category), the actor and writer/director reunited in 2022 for “Nope” to create even more movie magic. It’s lucky, then, that Kaluuya booked this role in “Black Mirror,” or we may never have gotten his performance in “Get Out.”