A Comedy Rumor Has Broken Containment

A bit of drama has come for two of my favorite comedy duos, Jordan Peele and his erstwhile collaborator, Keegan-Michael Key, and also Jordan Peele and his wife, Chelsea Peretti. This thinly veiled story unfolded in a recent stand-up set by Akilah Hughes, a comedian who used to co-host a Crooked Media podcast and generally has an impressive comedy CV. 

While onstage recently, Hughes told a gossipy story about a “comedy duo” she code-named “Lock and Banana” (please see the above real-life names if you’re confused), and a show she and “Lock” sold for “several figures” to a major studio that she also would not name but whose major character is “vermin.” (She also later name checks Bob Iger, so yes, it was—allegedly—Disney.) 

As she and “Lock” were developing the series, Hughes said she got a call from “Banana’s wife,” which kicked off with (probably-)Peretti saying, “I’m just calling you because I wish someone would have warned me” about “Lock’s wife,” aka Elle Key, a producer who’s been married to Keegan-Michael Key since 2018. Among the things that Hughes says probably-Peretti told her about Elle Key are: She wouldn’t trust her to hold a baby; that she once “poured alcohol on [a sober person’s] birthday cake”; and, most damning, “there’s no accounting for how much money she’s cost that Black man.” (Peele and Key’s famously excellent show ended in 2015, though they occasionally collaborated on a few more projects until 2022.) Hughes said the production process continued, but somehow Elle Key finagled her way into becoming an executive producer, and began offering “notes” on the already-written show scripts—helpful tidbits like “the rule of threes.” (If true… dear god.) When her notes were not taken seriously enough, Hughes alleges, Elle Key threatened to sue, and the studio eventually settled, which resulted in the Keys being removed from the project, and Hughes and the rest of the writing team having to crank out brand new scripts. And then Hughes’ show dream ended with the 2023 writers’ strike. 

The YouTube commenters immediately picked up what she was putting down, which prompted Hughes to comment on her own video (lmao): “Y’all are too clever, I thought it would at least take a day for the code to be deciphered lol.” I can’t say I believe this claim, given that she ended the gossip sesh by mentioning that “Lock” is doing insurance commercials while playing a guitar and Keegan-Michael Key recently just did exactly that in a Super Bowl State Farm commercial.

Since Hughes posted the YouTube video, the Key camp appears to be doing some damage control, with “multiple sources” telling TMZ last week that the story was “outlandish and fabricated.” But for now, it seems like they’re losing the PR war: As Hughes told Complex, “While I have nothing to add regarding the experiences I spoke about in the YouTube video, I do want to say I’ve felt validated by the dozens of creatives across the entertainment industry who have (since posting) come forward with similar stories.”

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