Keegan-Michael Key has addressed his separation from former creative partner Jordan Peele, describing their lack of contact as a “tragedy”.
Key, 53 and Peele, 45, first worked together on the sketch series Mad TV between 2004 and 2009, before collaborating as a double act on a run of projects, including their own acclaimed comedy show Key & Peele.
However, the pair have stopped working together in recent years, with Key increasingly focusing on acting roles and Peele establishing himself as one of the foremost filmmakers of his generation. Their most recent project was the 2022 Henry Selick animation Wendell & Wild, for which they contributed vocal parts. Before this, the pair were last seen onscreen together in the 2016 film Keanu.
Speaking to People magazine, Key reflected on first meeting Peele. “We lived together for a few months and would write and talk about comedy – who we liked and why we liked them and how that worked in the architecture of what we were trying to build comedically,” he said.
“When we were on camera, it was alchemy. It was just like, ‘Why is this working?’”
However, the Super Mario Bros Movie star noted that he and Peele “don’t see each other that often anymore… which is, to me, a tragedy.”
Exacerbating matters is the fact that Key and Peele now live in different parts of the US: Peele in Los Angeles and Key in New York.
“Your lives start to evolve and move in different directions,” he continued. “Our evolution, I think, is tied to both of what our desires are. His desire was to start exploring the horror genre, and my desire was to do more dramatic work like I had been trained in school.
“Both of us jumped to another platform [following the success of Key & Peele], but we needed that first platform.”
Peele has directed three features to date: Oscar-nominated horror satire Get Out, Us, and Nope.
Reflecting on their different roles on Key & Peele, Key said: “I was playing the clown more and doing more physical comedy in the beginning of our time together, and then I found myself evolving into playing more of the straight roles and teeing up Jordan to play the clown.”
The actor can next be seen in Transformers One, an animated prequel to the popular Transformers franchise.