‘Nope’: Brandon Perea Details Why He Ignored Jordan Peele’s Initial Script

Jordan Peele returns as writer/producer/director with Nope, and he set out to make his sci fi horror movie different from other Black films in the genre. As the creative force behind three mainstream movies — Get Out earned him a screenwriting Oscar, and he followed with Us — each film contains Peele’s vision for the characters and plot. Still, Nope ended up being a little different. Star Brandon Perea ignored Peele’s synopsis of his character in the original Nope script and created his own take, but he had a good reason for doing so.

What is ‘Nope’ about? A family story provides the framework for Jordan Peele’s latest movie

OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood (Keke Palmer) play siblings working for their family company, Haywood’s Hollywood Horses. Unless they’re bringing their trained horses onto movie sets, they live together on a remote California ranch. However, an odd presence appears and invades their peace and quiet in a major way.

Nope starts with Palmer delivering a tour-de-force monologue before the strange new presence interrupts OJ and Emerald’s solitude. Steven Yeun as Ricky ‘Jupe’ Park, Wrenn Schmidt as Amber Park, and Brandon Perea as Fry’s Electronics employee Angel Torres co-star. 

Perea revealed he ignored Peele’s characterization of Angel when he auditioned and played it completely differently. That forced Peele to rewrite the script based on Perea’s interpretation.

Brandon Perea reveals why he ignored Peele’s characterization of Angel Torres in his ‘Nope’ audition

Nope stands to be Perea’s most prominent role of his career thus far. He starred in Netflix’s The OA and the dystopian feature-length film American Insurrection, but Nope could take his career to another level, and that’s because he brought something fresh to the table.

Peele’s initial characterization of Angel Torres in early Nope scripts wasn’t satisfactory for Perea. He ignored the script notes and created his own take on the character during his audition, which he based on Peele’s previous work, as he told Yahoo:

“Originally, the character is written far different than what I performed … Jordan’s support characters all give such a grounded performance where they seem so real in the world, where you’re just like that person exists somewhere. I was like, let me bring it to a place that I can understand from the characters that I’ve seen in those spaces. And that’s what I delivered him in the performance, and Jordan loved it.”

Brandon Perea describes why he changed his Nope character Angel Torres

Perea told Yahoo the character was initially written as a happy-go-lucky guy, which didn’t feel genuine to him. So he played it differently, which led to Peele having to do extra work to the script.

Perea said Peele rewrote the script because of his interpretation of the character

Perea’s interpretation of Angel Torres started with his Nope audition, and the actor said it forced Peele to rework the script to reflect it. Yet it wasn’t just Peele working in solitude. Perea said he and Peele had a lot of back and forth regarding the character’s new direction.

“It’s incredible,” he told Yahoo. “I was very hands-on with crafting this character, but it was very collaborative as well. It was both of us hashing things out. We got it to a great place.”

Nope comes to theaters July 22.

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