Jordan Peele’s Us originally focused on just one character

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Jordan Peele remains a signature voice in the horror genre. His 2017 film GET OUT earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Since then he's gone on to produce the Academy Award winning Spike Lee film BLACKKKLANSMAN and developed a new Twilight Zone series at CBS All Access. Last year saw the release of his sophomore directorial effort US. While not as universally lauded as GET OUT, US holds a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and made $255 million at the global box office.

A fundamental plot pillar of US is that it involves an entire family being terrorized. Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, and Evan Alex all play various members of the Wilson clan. While on vacation, the family is haunted by another family that looks exactly like them, known as the Tethered. Although the family aspect of US feels inherently instrumental to the success of the film at this point, the family dynamic wasn't always front and center. In a recent Q & A session after a special screening of US at the ArcLight Hollywood theater in L.A., Jordan Peele stated US originally focused on a sole individual:

“I was toying around with a version of this that was much more stripped down and didn’t have the family. It was a one-on-one doppelgänger horror stalker story. And I was exploring that for several months and I kept coming back to this idea that that image of four doppelgängers, it carries with it this really profound truth to it. For those four people to exist that are the exact same age and look exactly like my family, for that to be grounded in any way, it would require that I had sex with my wife on the same moment and the same sort of genetic being came from our relationship and our love. So that to me created this idea of this tether of fate which I thought was a very interesting idea; that in order for a doppelgänger to exist, there would have to be this metaphysical connection that was kind of crazier and deeper than something we could understand and put somewhere between religion and science.”

Obviously films go through a number of drafts over the course of their development. ALIEN 3 for example went through a myriad of iterations over the course of its journey to the big screen. Sometimes the finished product can be radically different from the original. Hell at one point George Lucas' original STAR WARS had Luke as a female and was entitled THE ADVENTURES OF LUKE STARKILLER: AS TAKEN FROM THE JOURNAL OF THE WHILLS, SAGA 1: THE STAR WARS. Now that's quite a mouthful more than simply US.

Excessive title lengths not withstanding, I'm glad Jordan Peele chose to focus on a family rather than an individual. While I believe Peele possesses the writing and directing skills to have pulled off a one person doppelganger story, what we got was far more interesting. By utilizing a nuclear family dynamic it gives the film additional layers and nuance to the narrative. Plus multiple creepy ass Tethered are just scarier than a single creepy ass Tethered.

Do you guys think US could have worked as a single person narrative? Did you like the film we got? Do you believe as I do that Lupita Nyong'o got robbed of an Oscar nomination? Hit us up in the comments below!