Salon.com > Key and Peele

Must-see morning clip

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 14:02:00 +0000

Obama and his anger translator tell Americans what to expect under a second term:

Key & Peele: “That’s what Obama should say”

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 16:00:00 +0000

Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele comprise the sketch-comedy duo "Key & Peele," whose Comedy Central series returned for its second season last week. (It airs Wednesday nights on Comedy Central at 10:30 p.m.) Key and Peele, who previously worked together on "Mad TV," are both biracial and their comedy reflects that: A significant proportion of their work involves issues of cultural translation, who sounds like what and to whom and in what specific circumstances. Their most famous sketch is a recurring bit about President Obama and his anger translator Luther, who puts into words what the always-calm world leader might really be feeling.

Key and Peele spoke with Salon about the new season of the show, how it will be less explicitly concerned with race, and meeting Obama.

Are you guys surprised at how much the anger translator sketch has caught on?

Is Obama too inscrutable to impersonate?

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 19:00:00 +0000

For a comic, trying to impersonate the self-possessed, intellectual manner of President Obama is about as thankless a task as having the world leader’s job. It takes a level of mastery, creativity and maybe even a little perversion to chip away at Obama’s impenetrable reserve, and wedge your way into — or invent whole cloth — his inscrutable psyche. Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele, better known as Comedy Central’s comic duo Key and Peele, are arguably the best in the Obama-impression biz, with their “Obama’s Anger Translator” shtick: Peele plays Obama as the carefully compartmentalized, deliberately even-keeled, poised and well-spoken world leader, while Luther (Key), his unabashedly angry black sidekick — the id to the president's superego — parses the subtext of his words, and translates them into a profanity-laden raging tirade. (Here they are on the 47 percent.)