Watching Jordan Peele at SXSW introduce the world premiere of the highly-anticipated Dev Patel-directed action/thriller Monkey Paw, a film which Peele produced through his Monkeypaw Productions, it's jarring to consider how differently his career has evolved from that of his long-time comedic collaborator, Keegan-Michael Key, with whom he created the seminal sketch comedy classic television series Key & Peele.
Key & Peele, which ran for five seasons from 2012 through 2015, was a groundbreaking show for Comedy Central and career-defining achievement for both actors, who had come up in sketch comedy together as fellow cast members on the Fox series Mad TV.
Their chemistry and comedic sensibilities on the series were so in sync, it was hard to picture them doing anything apart — yet their careers could not be evolving along more distinct paths since Key & Peele ended.
Keegan-Michael Key, who was just announced to be appearing in the third season of ABC's Abbott Elementary, has stuck close to his comedy roots, and is seemingly appearing in everything and anything across the comedic spectrum. Key recently hosted the ESPYs, had a starring role in Wonka, and even makes a puzzling blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in a recent AT&T commercial where he pretty much just chews the scenery (and a sandwich), yet still makes you laugh.
Jordan Peele, meanwhile, is almost unrecognizable from his sketch comedy days, both in terms of his physical appearance and his body of work post-Key & Peele — he's usually sporting a long gray beard and thick black frame glasses, and has an entirely new creative sensibility to match the new look, becoming the definitive horror movie auteur of his generation.
To be fair, all of the films Peele has written and directed starting with Get Out up through his most recent feature Nope, are still ripe with comedy and biting political satire — but they're also couched in a modern grizzly horror genre that no one really saw coming from Peele.
Perhaps that was why Get Out was such an unexpected surprise hit for Universal when it premiered seven years ago, and maybe Peele was encouraged to stick with that genre going forward — although by all appearances it seems this is Peele's preferred space to work in, considering he is also producing films and television shows in the horror/thriller realm.
Certainly great comedic minds can evolve and tackle other topics — look at Saturday Night Live writer-turned-environmental-and-politically-themed-filmmaker Adam McKay. Actually McKay is a prime example since, before his more serious turn, he was primarily known as Will Ferrell's frequent collaborator, who like Key has also chosen to remain largely in the comedy space since his split with McKay.
It's just interesting to see the choices actors so connected by a project or style can make to re-define their careers, while others choose to remain in the genre that made them famous. Perhaps these unexpected layers are what made their high-profile collaborations so fruitful to begin with.
Regardless, I'll continue to watch anything involving Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key (as well as Adam McKay and Will Ferrell, for that matter) — both for their shared body of work on Key & Peele and increasingly divergent individual paths since. Although any comedian will tell you that the element of surprise, chasing the unexpected, is the essence of comedy — so in that regard maybe all of these geniuses are still comedians at heart.
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