![]() is one of my best friends from USC, a super good friend who took a chance on us in the first place. I think you learn a little something from everything, from film school sets to, obviously, Creed II. How did previous projects prepare you to tackle this story? You’ve got experience on some pretty big sets, Creed II especially. Jamie Foxx and Juel Taylor behind the scenes of They Cloned Tyrone. ![]() And from there, the conspiracies kind of organically grew out of that. I think those two things came together to create the plot in the story, so to speak. Just from a meat-and-potatoes standpoint, it was just wanting to make a bootleg Scooby-Doo movie: a mystery movie where these detectives are the most ill-equipped detectives to solve a mystery, but somehow strangely equipped at the same time due to a very unique set of skills that your average detectives may not possess. Just thinking about that, and just how their trajectories kind of diverged and the role that privilege played in that. A lot of friends had some circumstances outside their control that derailed what they had going on. It kind of sprang from a few places, but really this question of, “Is there a difference between blame and responsibility?” It was kind of like a thematic North Star that we tried to build off of. ![]() This is your directorial debut, so how did you land on They Cloned Tyrone for your first big project? This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.įontaine (John Boyega) and Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) might be in over their heads, but their “unique set of skills” give them the edge against the average detective. Inverse chatted with Taylor about the inspirations, iconography, and the joys of disorientation in They Cloned Tyrone. The writer-director is cautiously optimistic - but with its ironclad premise, unshakeable cast, and stunning production design, the Netflix film might already be a classic. But Tyrone must first resonate with its audiences, and (hopefully) inspire a Halloween costume or two. As for what he envisions next, Taylor isn’t averse to sequels. The film may have started out as a hypothetical, but it’s quickly taking on a life of its own. “The more I said it as just the joke title, the more people gravitated towards that,” Taylor explains. The epithet was also more popular with Taylor’s friends. As Taylor and his writing partner, Tony Rettenmaier, developed the story further, They Cloned Tyrone felt more like a natural fit. But it glossed over another side of his story: the coded humor that invoked films like Shaft and Friday. It certainly encapsulated the Matrix-like paranoia and haunting themes that Taylor wanted to explore in the film. “We were going to call it Reagan Era,” Taylors tells Inverse. He had a slightly more cerebral title in mind for the real thing. But in the beginning, it was actually the working title for what would become the Creed II scribe’s directorial debut. They Cloned Tyrone sounds more like a Weird Al cover of the eponymous Erykah Badu song (a truth that the Netflix film makes sure to acknowledge before the credits roll). ![]() Juel Taylor never imagined that his debut feature would tout such a cheeky title. ![]()
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