Daniel Kaluuya Cried on Cue in ‘Get Out’ By Thinking of a Color
Ahead of the release of Jordan Peele’s psychological horror flick, Nope, one of its stars, Daniel Kaluuya, opened up about another Peele film he worked on: 2017’s Get Out.
Kaluuya recently explained how he landed the leading role in Get Out — specifically citing his ability to cry on cue. Strangely enough, the Judas and the Black Messiah actor revealed the odd way he conjures up tears.
Who does Daniel Kaluuya play in ‘Get Out?’
In Get Out, Kaluuya plays Chris Washington, a photographer who decides to join his girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) on a meet-the-parents weekend trip to upstate New York. But despite her seemingly well-intended family, things quickly spiral out of control when Chris discovers the disturbing secret they’re harboring.
Get Out was Peele’s directorial debut. It went on to earn four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. The film was highly praised by audiences and holds a 98 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer.
Thanks to his scene-stealing performance in the movie, Kaluuya also received an Oscar nomination of his own for Best Actor.
The ‘Get Out’ scene Daniel Kaluuya had to cry in
While appearing on an episode of Hot Ones, Kaluuya told host Sean Evans about the key to crying on camera.
During the interview, Evans brought up how Peele often tells the story of how Kaluuya secured his role in Get Out. While auditioning, Kaluuya had to cry in the iconic Sunken Place scene. He cried at the same time, in the same way, across five different takes. The writer-director was so impressed by this that he gave Kaluuya the role.
When asked about his process behind whipping up tears on cue, Kaluuya explained. “Sometimes you do emotional memory,” he shared. “For me, it’s color. When it’s a mad situation, I remember the color I was wearing. The color would trigger me.”
The Queen & Slim star added that takes where he has to start in the middle of a scene can be “quite difficult” for him as a performer.
The inspiration behind ‘Get Out’ and The Sunken Place
Peele is one of the strongest directors working in Hollywood today. His films use plenty of real-life inspiration when tackling issues such as race and performative allyship. In the past, the horror auteur has spoken at length about how he came up with the idea for Get Out, specifically, The Sunken Place.
“I always had this concept of the place that you’re falling toward when you’re going to sleep, and you get that falling sensation and catch yourself,” he told Vanity Fair in 2019. “And if you didn’t catch yourself, where would you end up? I had this hellish image, and I thought of this idea of, ‘What if you were in a place, and you could look through your own eyes as if they were literal windows or a screen, and see what your body was seeing but feel like a prisoner in your own mind—the chamber of your mind?'”
He continued. “The moment I thought of that, it immediately occurred to me the theme of abduction and connection to the prison industrial complex that this movie was sort of presenting a metaphor for. It was a very emotional discovery.” In fact, writing such a brutal scene made Peele so emotional that he “literally cried.”
For Get Out, Peele also pulled inspiration from horror genre greats like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, the Oscar-winning thriller The Silence of the Lambs, and even a bit from one of Eddie Murphy’s stand-up specials, Delirious.
