Nope scene stealer Brandon Perea: 'No one's going to expect this'

When Nope director Jordan Peele introduced Brandon Perea at the film's L.A. world premiere, he told the packed theater, "If you don't know his name yet, you will."

Indeed, as Angel, the recently dumped, unnaturally blond tech-support worker who helps siblings OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer) try to capture video of a terrifying UFO in Peele's sci-fi horror film, Perea, 27, not only holds his own amongst Nope's more established actors (Steven Yeun also co-stars), but yanks scenes right from under them. Initially deadpan, Perea's enthusiastic Angel provides depth and comic relief in equal measure: In one scene, he shows a clearly uninterested OJ pics of his ex-girlfriend, now a CW star, doing so with a weird mixture of pride and bitterness. But his character wasn't initially written that way, according to Peele.

"We put out a one-line about the character, what I thought the character was, and you came in with a very clear view of who Angel was," Peele tells Perea at EW's Around the Table. "And it was not who I was asking for, but it changed the role, and it changed the way I look at the role."

Originally written as an upbeat, happy-go-lucky tech geek, Perea's interpretation of Angel took it down a few notches. He went into his audition thinking, "'Who the hell's happy to be working at a retail store?' When I go in there, people are kind of depressed," says Perea. "They're kind of just like, 'Hey, what do you need? No, it's not on sale.'"

Peele found Perea's reading hilarious. "I remember laughing so hard at his audition, and it was like, 'No, this is the right way to go.' The whole hope for me as a collaborator is that my actor is going to understand the character better than I can, so that I can focus on the story, and really ask and understand how they're feeling in the moment, because all these people are really capable of putting themselves inside the role."

Part of Perea's prep included some Peele-assigned movie homework: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, No Country for Old Men, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien — all before Perea had even seen a script. "When I booked the role, there was no synopsis," says Perea, previously best known for his turn as French in Netflix's spooky The OA. "I had no clue what Nope was about. I was just like, 'It's a Jordan movie. How the hell am I going to say no to be one of the leads?' And I watched all these movies and I'm like, 'What the hell is he doing? I don't know what he's about to do.' Month and a half later, script arrives, and then I read it and I was like, 'Damn, no one's going to expect this.'"

As for Perea's chemistry with stars Kaluuya and Palmer, the trio's initial awkwardness deepens into the intimacy of a found family of sorts, a progression that was definitely intentional on Peele's part. He didn't even let the actors say hello before filming their first scene together. "We got introduced in the scene and in real life literally at the same time," Perea recalls. "And I just remember seeing how much chemistry y'all had already, and I'm like, 'What the hell? This is my day one.'"

Adds Peele: "I feel bad for Brandon. I just threw him in with two of the most charismatic, beloved actors of all time. He comes in, he holds his own, and I remember right at the end of that scene, you guys were like, 'Yeah!'"

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