Jordan Peele Talks Jay-Z's Big Advice And How Alien Inspired Us

What goes on indoor Jordan Peele's mind? In the latest episode of The Big Picture, MTV News correspondent Josh Horowitz tries to find out.


The two covered a span of topics, from the softball stories, like the time whenever Jay-Z placated the writer-director's worries that he wouldn't have the ability to replicate Get Out's success (Jay instructed him, "It doesn't matter. You already did that."), All of the way to the inspiration beyond Peele's latest contribution to the horror genre — and the movie that each person will soon be talking about — Us, place on Earth out of Peele's innermost fear of one day looking up and seeing himself staring back at him. "The idea of yourself giving you a knowing smile, group kind of indicating, 'I'm the version that was ready for this.' There's something chilling about that," he said.


Exploring that fear led him to the idea that "collectively, we have a dark side," and in a time as soon as the socio-political landscape appears to be revealing more of that dark side on the day-to-day, Peele admitted that "it's not an accident that my fears were surrounding this sense of us as a collective," later stating, but you define 'us', in group for you to have us, there's gotta be a them, and ... In its core what this movie is about is we are going to value our own, yet we visualize it, more than we'll value the other."


The story's relevance to today is rooted by nods to the movies that made the horror genre what it is today, plus one very specific inspiration for the movie's main character, played by Lupita Nyong'o — Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley from sci-fi classic Alien. "I'd been telling her, look, this is gonna be a thing — you, going down to save your son, with a Spoiler Alert on your journey with your fire-poker weapon. It's like iconic, let's go, mom-power stuff that, you know, is so Ripley," he said.


And speaking of pop culture references, yes, Peele did address the famed inclusion of a "Thriller" t-shirt. "[Michael Jackson] is a fascinating being," Peele mentioned, pointing out that the film reflects the same duality that right now plagues the late singer's career. "It group kind of connected to me, in this Michael Jackson duality, that there's this good philanthropy with this underbelly of darkness that is sort of confusing in the kind of nostalgia it gives me."


For all of the specifics in between and more, watch The Big Picture above.