Henry Selick says Jordan Peele urged him to have Wendell & Wild center a person of color
During a New York Comic Con panel, Wendell & Wild director Henry Selick reveals that Peele's input was essential to creating and casting protagonist Kat Elliot
It takes a visionary director to adapt Neil Gaiman’s Coraline in a successful manner, and Henry Selick is just that. But during a Saturday afternoon panel at New York Comic Con, the Wendell & Wild director says that choosing his protagonist for the project involved a key moment of collaborating with Jordan Peele, who he says pushed him to create a story that centers a young woman of color.
“Everything changed and evolved once we got in business together,” Selick shares. “[Peele] convinced me that the protagonist should be young Kat Elliot… he convinced me Kat needed to be a person of color.”
Selick, who calls Peele a “total freak” for stop-motion animation, says Peele urged him to make the choice based on Peele’s own experience with the genre as a child.
“Jordan said when he was a kid, it really upset him when he’d see animated films where there was no one onscreen who looks like him,” Selick shares. “That sort of unlocked a door.”