Найруулагч Каспер Келли “Buddy” киноныхоо талаар дэлгэрэнгүй ярилцлаа

Buddy director Casper Kelly spoke with ComingSoon about his new comedy horror movie, which is a twisted, R-rated take on Barney. Kelly discussed the level of violence, its inspirations beyond Barney, and more. Starring Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Patton Oswalt, Michael Shannon, with Topher Grace and Keegan-Michael Key, it’s out in theaters on August 28, 2026.

“Remember Buddy — the bright orange unicorn and star of that classic children’s television show who brought joy and life lessons into your living room? Inside the colorful world of ‘It’s Buddy!’, a group of children spend their days singing, dancing, and helping Buddy spread happiness. But when one child refuses to play along, Buddy is not pleased and cracks begin to appear in this seemingly perfect world,” says the official synopsis.

Tyler Treese: Congrats on Buddy. I feel like one of your real talents as a director is your ability to replicate tones. We’ve seen you do horror and Hallmark movies, and now you’re replicating ’90s kids’ shows. What was your process like for getting that specific tone down? Especially for the first 30 minutes, it’s played very straight, where you’re just in that kid’s universe.

Casper Kelly: Well, I think a lot of it was muscle memory from a misspent childhood watching too much television. But then I had a refresher when my own children started watching TV, and I was watching it with them. Finally, I did do research and watch a bunch of shows again.

But it was working with Zach Cooperstein, our DP, to get the look, and Anna Kathleen, our production designer, to design this set that both evoked Barney and other shows of that period, but also felt like its own show. It could have been a real show that appeared.

Yeah, it’s a nice blend of elements from other shows and then still doing your own thing. I also felt some Pee-wee’s Playhouse with some sections. What were your main reference points beyond Barney?

Oh yeah, it’s a great question. It was Pee-wee’s Playhouse, as you say, Dora the Explorer, which is obviously a cartoon, but I liked elements of it. Blue’s Clues was a big one. That has a mailbox.

Then later on, a little bit of Howdy Doody and a lot of Wizard of Oz, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. I’m sure there’s more that just filtered in because I know so many of them, like Doodlebops and Backyardigans, various others. Little Einsteins, I’m sure it all filtered in a little bit. But those are the main ones.

This idea just popped in my head. I don’t think I’d be the right person to do it, because I should do something different, but wouldn’t it be interesting to do a horror movie related to those Nickelodeon shows, like Victorious? You know, that’d be interesting.

I wanted to ask you about working with Keegan-Michael Key because he’s such a versatile voice actor, and we get to see him put some different spins on Buddy’s voice. Can you speak to just working with him and allowing him to really show his range? Because he gets to take the character in a few fun places.

Yeah, he was a joy to work with. When we had our first conversations, we both agreed that we wanted it to feel like a unique character because he could imitate Barney, but that’s not what we wanted to do.

We wanted it to feel like its own character. So we talked about that, and then we kind of spent a day together working on it before we really started recording.

Then, as you say, he’s so versatile that it was fun. As we were recording the lines, we would talk back and forth, and we’d go, “Okay, I’m going to give you one a little passive-aggressive. I’m going to give you one irritated. I’m going to give you one straight, that feels straight like the character would play it.”

So it gave me a lot of ability in the edit to control the tone of everything just as I wanted.

Tyler Treese: Did you kind of mix and match those takes? Because there’s almost a bipolar-type quality to the character, where he snaps back into being friendly for a second, and then he’s a bit more passive-aggressive. I thought that was fun.

Casper Kelly: Absolutely, absolutely. I think that’s part of that type of character, which I hate to admit I have parts of. Classically, people that come from what’s considered a nice culture will have passive-aggressive elements, and I’m from the South.

In contrast to New York, where they’ll be like, “You motherf—er, da-da-da-da-da-da-da,” and then they make up. They say what they mean, they say what they feel, and they move on. But a passive-aggressive culture will not be able to express that, so it kind of seeps out in other ways.

One of my best friends is Canadian, and he’ll never be mean, but he sure can get passive-aggressive.

Yes, yes, that’s another one. Yep, totally.

We’re dealing with kids being chased for most of this film. They’re running away. There are some deaths. How is it figuring out where, within good taste, you could use violence? Because you don’t want it to be too gory. I don’t think, besides the real sickos, anybody really wants to see a bunch of kids getting disemboweled — which I probably would watch as well — but you find a good medium here.

Thank you. Yeah, that was a lot of thinking. I was really nervous about it myself because I’m sure I have people in my life, and you probably do in yours, where if a dog gets hit with an axe, they’re out. They’re out of the movie. “I’m not watching.”

So it was a line to thread, and it just was basically by feeling. This was a movie where I wanted to go far, but not lose the audience. There might be a world later where I do a movie more like Terrifier, where it just goes all the way. But I don’t know. That may not be how I’m wired. We’ll see.

I had other things I wanted to say. I had a lot more I wanted to do than that. I don’t want to do torture porn with kids. I don’t want to do Saw with kids.

Cristin and Topher Grace are married in the film. They were both in iconic sitcoms. I know that pairing wasn’t intentional to play on that, but once they both got cast, did you kind of want to play with that in their segments?

Absolutely. I think they’re both so great. The way Topher played his character — and we talked about it — I would say it’s almost like he doesn’t have the tools to meet Cristin where she is. It’s almost like he’s stuck in a sort of different show that doesn’t have the tools to get to an emotional level where she’s at. You know what I’m trying to say?

So yeah, it was really fun to play with that.