Jordan Peele said he's giving up acting to focus on his work behind the camera.
Peele revealed his plans moving forward while discussing Get Out with actor Bradley Whitford during an ActBlue fundraiser in support of the run-off election in Georgia. Peele explained why he would prefer to stay off-screen from this point on, saying, "I can watch the films I direct [but] watching me perform just feels like, it’s a bad kind of masturbatory. It’s masturbation you don’t enjoy."
The critically acclaimed Get Out marked Peele's directorial debut and won him an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He followed it up two years later with Us, another original horror film that earned lots of praise from critics and went on to become a box office hit. During the ActBlue event, Peele talked about how he tries to focus on the stories he tells more than his ego, saying, "The biggest thing that gets into an artist’s way is his or her own ego. I’m always trying to figure out ways to keep my ego in check because when that sneaks in there, it fucks shit up - almost always..."
Peele's most recent on-screen role was that of the Narrator in CBS All Access' reboot of The Twilight Zone. He has continued to do voice acting since he started directing, including voicing multiple characters on the Netflix animated series Big Mouth and lending his vocals to films like Toy Story 4 and Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie. Up next, Peele will voice a character in director Henry Selick's stop-motion horror-comedy Wendell and Wild, which Peele co-wrote with his longtime collaborator Keegan Michael-Key (who's also a member of the voice cast).
Universal Pictures has scheduled Peele's as-yet-untitled new horror movie for a July 22, 2022 release date, with Peele once again acting as writer, director and producer. He also recently served as an executive producer on showrunner Misha Green's genre-blending series Lovecraft Country and co-wrote and produced director Nia DaCosta's spiritual sequel Candyman, which will open theatrically this year after being delayed due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
In November, Peele became attached to produce a remake of Wes Craven's horror-satire The People Under the Stairs for Universal through his Monkeypaw Productions banner. Neither a writer nor a director have been officially announced for the film yet.
Source: Twitter