Jordan Peele has been getting a lot of attention for his 2017 movie Get Out. However, it wasn't so long ago that he was more known for acting than directing, and more known for being funny than for creating horror projects. While accepting a Director's Guild Award for first-time directing over the weekend, Peele revealed the movie that is directly responsible for the director quitting the acting game. That movie is none other than The Emoji Movie. He revealed:
The Emoji Movie actually helped me quit acting. I was offered the role of Poop. This is true. I would not make this up.
During his acceptance speech for the award, Jordan Peele got more specific about what happened. He said his manager asked him to play poop, to which he responded, "That's fucked up." Not totally deterred though, he slept on it, asking his manager the next day how much The Emoji Movie was actually going to pay for him to voice a literal piece of crap. Unfortunately, by then the studio had moved on and had already asked Sir Patrick Stewart to voice the character. As anyone who has seen The Emoji Movie knows, Sir Patrick Stewart was totally fine with getting paid to voice the poop emoji.
The whole experience was apparently off-putting enough that Jordan Peele ultimately opted to pass on acting afterward. This then led him to Get Out, and he's previously revealed that horror movies were a passion for him and he had been striving to get into the genre for some time. As for how this worked into his Get Out speech, The Emoji Movie had been brought up earlier in the night (via Vanity Fair), when Judd Apatow had cracked a joke about women coming up with stuff like Lady Bird and men coming up with The Emoji Movie.
Jordan Peele has previously said he would like to permanently transition away from acting into doing something else. The last acting role he took was in Keanu back in 2016, although he has done voice work for Big Mouth and Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie since then. In addition, he is reportedly filming the movie Abruptio, which is supposed to come out in 2019.
As for Patrick Stewart, he didn't seem to mind playing the poop emoji. The Emoji Movie voice actor was pretty cheeky about the role, noting,
It's been a lifelong preparation. I knew a time would come that all of that hard work would add up to something.
If you missed out on The Emoji Movie, you can take a look at the full trailer. In the meantime, we'll keep you updated as Jordan Peele figures out what he wants to do next in Hollywood, and potentially moves forward with his second directing project.
