Keegan-Michael Key is bringing to life a beloved character!
"I really tap into my inner child whenever I'm doing voice-over work on an animated feature," the “Key & Peele” Emmy winner, 53, stated. "Cartoons are exaggerated by nature, so you get to be exaggerated in the work that you're doing. And I believe that requires a childlike spark from within you."
The experience of Key entering the recording booth for "Transformers One," which will be released in theaters on September 20, was the fulfillment of a lifelong goal of his to become a part of a brand that he "adored" while growing up in Southfield, Michigan, as the son of social-worker parents.
"I would come home from school, and it was almost a religious experience to watch Transformers," he said of the 1984 animated series that established a toy and movie empire. "The fact that there were action figures that did the things that the characters did was ingenious. I wanted those toys so badly! And I probably got two total in my whole life."
It was "a full-circle moment" for Key to play the role of Bumblebee in this new origin narrative for the highly regarded yellow robot, and it was also the most recent opportunity for him to let his imagination run wild. Having received his classical training onstage at the University of Detroit Mercy and Penn State, he decided to test himself by taking on "chameleon roles" after he made his debut on the television show "MADtv" on Fox in 2004.
"A character who sounds different, who walks different, whose heart beats at a different speed, that's what really gets my juices going," he said, as per In Touch Weekly.
Alongside his "MADtv" co-star and roommate Jordan Peele, 45, he was responsible for the creation of a large number of notable characters from 2012 to 2015 on the sketch show "Key & Peele." As they entered the zeitgeist, the two individuals played a variety of roles, ranging from enthusiastic valets to football players with bizarre names. The "anger translator" that Key employed even went so far as to accompany President Barack Obama onstage at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2015.
One of his favorite sketches from the second season of "Key & Peele" is the one in which he plays Michael Jackson at a Halloween party. In this particular sketch, he is "just trying to make Jordan laugh. He never breaks!"
The two friends "don't see each other that often anymore, which is to be a tragedy," Key, who has since starred in projects such as the Apple TV+ series "Schmigadoon!" and the movie "Wonka," stated while Peele has become an acclaimed horror director with films such as "Nope" and "Get Out." Key and Peele worked together on various projects, including a season of "Fargo," the action comedy "Keanu" in 2016, and the animated "Wendell & Wild" in 2022.
"Your lives start to evolve and move in different directions," Key says. "He's in L.A., and we're in New York."
