Relatively speaking, Jason Mitchell was a nobody when he auditioned for Keanu. Straight Outta Compton, the film that took him “from zero to a hundred real quick,” as he puts it during a call from LA, was still months from release. Plus he was the one virtually unknown dramatic actor who walked into a room filled with 30-odd comedians, plus the film’s stars, Key & Peele. “They were very passionate about this project. They were in that room improvising with us on that day. It was pretty painstaking. It was blood, sweat, and tears that day,” Mitchell tells the Straight, his voice low and serious. It sounds terrifying. “I shat myself a little bit on the way in,” he affirms. And then he busts a gut.

Mitchell got the role (obviously). He plays Bud, a gangbanger with lethal family problems in a film that sees Key & Peele graduate from Comedy Central topliners into the big bad world of the movies. The premise is insane: Jordan Peele’s Rell Williams and his cousin Clarence Doobril (Keegan-Michael Key) bungle their way through LA gangland trying to rescue Rell’s cat-napped kitten from a murderous dealer called Cheddar (Method Man), hoping to save Keanu from the feline thug life.“Everybody has that same moment when they first pick up a kitten,” reasons Mitchell, possibly recalling the image of Method Man cradling an eight-week-old tabby in his lap. “No matter how tough you are, you still have that same moment when you pick up a kitten.”

The film, in fact, plays around rather smartly with negative portrayals of African Americans and deeply-encoded notions of black machismo. And that’s just the ladies! (In this case embodied by a gang enforcer played by Tiffany Haddish.) After his turn as Eazy-E in Compton, Mitchell serendipitously adds another layer of resonance. Compton’s success ends up being good for Keanu. “For lack of a better term, everybody expected us to fuck it up, you know what I mean?” he says of the film that made him a star. “They never do these things right. Ray was a good one, but very seldom do they do these kind of movies right, so I knew we were coming in with some kind of underdog status. But it gave me the chance to really blow it out of the water. It gave me the chance to show ‘em the different layers that I have. I think I killed it.”

He’s no less magnetic in the smaller and much sillier role of Bud. Keanu will be remembered for a handful of killer set-pieces, but one might stand out in particular, and we have to ask—how does Mitchell really feel about George Michael? “I’m not so much of a George Michael fan,” he answers, very politely. “I’m more of a hip hop kind of guy. But he’s a legend! I respect him! I definitely respect him! Dude is a genius! ‘Freedom! 90’? Biggest thing since ‘Heard it Through the Grapevine’!” And then Jason Mitchell busts a gut again.

Georgia Straight, April 2016