Pack away your red jumpsuit, set down that white bunny and return your golden scissors — Jordan Peele is begging fans not to show him your Us costumes.
At its release back in March, the horror film made a killing at the box office, and it shows no sign of slowing down its influence as a popular Halloween costume this spooky season. And while the ubiquity of his creation makes the writer/director proud, he’s really starting to be disturbed by the cosplay.
“Now, in Halloween season, I’ve started receiving a lot of people in Tethered costumes, which, it doesn’t make me comfortable,” Peele, 40, told Variety on Sunday. “You know, I like the fact that the movie is happening, it’s a phenomenon, it’s resonating, it’s iconic — but, I don’t know, there’s something about … it’s like, they’re impersonating the stalkers and sending me stuff.”
The Oscar-winning Get Out scribe added, “I just feel like, just don’t go into that mindset.”
Jordan Peele has a special request for people dressing up as #UsMovie characters for Halloween #HonoraryOscars pic.twitter.com/va1XKJsQhm
— Variety (@Variety) October 28, 2019
Without spoilers, the film follows an average family as they’re attacked by a set of devilish doppelgängers hell-bent on stealing their lives. Called the “Tethered” ones, these haunting characters donned matching red jumpsuits, fingerless brown leather gloves and sandals to take on the protagonists.
Elaborating on why he’s irked by the trendy costumes, Peele signaled to Us star Lupita Nyong’o‘s chilling performance in the film — and her equally off-putting on-set persona between takes.
“She was essentially in character, at the very least in mood, on set at all times as Red, which was already pretty terrifying for me, and pretty magnificent to watch,” Peele said as Nyong’o stood beside him on the red carpet for the 11th Annual Governors Awards in Los Angeles.
Nyong’o said the iconography of Us — particularly a motif of the clock time 11:11 — has found its way into her life in other facets.
“I would receive text messages, screenshots of just ’11:11,’ and then I would just do it to him,” she said about her in-joke with Peele. “Four months went by, I hadn’t heard from Jordan, and then I just got — you sent me ’11:11′ in the middle of nowhere, and that’s always creepy, especially coming from him.”
Even some celebrities opted for Us as their Halloween costumes this year. For their Halloween episode, the cast of black-ish, including leads Tracee Ellis Ross and Anthony Anderson, dressed up in the full get-ups.
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“Tethered. The Johnsons do it again. Shout out to @blackishabc hair, makeup, and wardrobe for killing the Halloween game,” Ross captioned an Instagram post of her costars in the costumes.
Peele isn’t saying you should abandon your Tethered costume altogether, however — he just doesn’t want to trigger flashbacks to the experience he had creating the horror film.
“Don’t send me pictures of yourself dressed up as creepy characters,” he told Variety. “I’m good.”