FRESH AIR
Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele are the duo behind the Comedy Central sketch comedy show Key & Peele. Each has a white mother and black father, and a lot of their comedy is about race: Perhaps because they’re biracial, they’re perfectly comfortable satirizing white people and African-Americans — as well as everybody else. The New Yorker’s TV critic Emily Nussbaum as a “Golden Ticket to themes rarely explored on television.” Peele tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, “I think the reason both of us became actors is because we did a fair amount of code switching growing up, and still do.” Key and Peele met in Chicago, where they were part of the improv scene, and later worked together on the sketch comedy series MADtv. Their current show on Comedy Central wraps up its third season on Dec. 18, and has been renewed for a fourth. Key and Peele tell Gross the stories behind some of their sketches, and their feelings about Saturday Night Live’s lack of female African-American cast members. MORE