Warning: Nope spoilers ahead!
As with his first two films, Get Out and Us, Jordan Peele’s alien-invasion thriller Nope is littered with hidden meanings, visual references, callbacks and Easter eggs, which have been catalogued in detail ever since the movie landed in theaters in July and flew away to $171 million at the worldwide box office.
But for Brandon Perea, the 27-year-old breakout actor who plays Angel, a Fry’s Electronics employees who helps the Haywood siblings (Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer) track the UFO above their horse ranch, the best Easter egg was simply that his character survives.
“In an original draft [of Peele’s screenplay], Angel was gone,” Perea told us in a new interview promoting the film’s 4K Ultra HD release, where he was joined by Palmer (watch above). “And I was like, ‘Damn, no way!’”
Perea doesn’t get specific, but as you as you could probably guess, Angel met his doom in that early draft by being sucked up into the belly of the beast, the hovering people eater that resembles a space ship, which is eventually dubbed Jean Jacket.
In the final cut, Angel becomes enwrapped in a tarp and barbed wire and winds up getting spat out. Not only does he survive, but now there could even be a future for Perea’s character beyond Nope. While the actor told us in July he thought Peele might not be done with these characters, the writer-director himself teased a sequel in the following month, telling the New York Times, “We’re not over telling all of these stories.
“I mean, we’re ready,” Palmer enthusiastically responded, raising her hand to her ear in the universal phone gesture. “Call me!”
Of course, not everyone was head over heels for Nope.
In a much-mocked tweetstorm, YouTuber/wrestler Logan Paul went on off on the film, calling it “one of the worst movies” he’d seen in a long time.
“You take it how you take it,” responded Perea.
Said Palmer: “I can’t imagine how cool it must for Jordan to have such intense reactions. That is literally what everybody wants as an artist. For whoever sees it, for it to evoke something. You never want someone to watch your movie and just go, ‘OK.’ Whether they love it, whether they hate it, you want them to feel something strongly. So that I love.”
— Video produced by Kyle Moss and edited by Jason Fitzpatrick
Nope is now available on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and digital.
Watch our interview with Jordan Peele and the full cast:
