Anderson .Paak remembers wanting to spend the pandemic quarantine getting to know his son better after spending years on tour. When he asked the boy, Soul Rasheed, what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said…”I want to be a YouTuber.”
“I saw his page and he was doing video game tutorials and I told him, ‘What if we did some skits together. You know, your dad has some clout, and we can put this on my page and get you some subscribers,’” .Paak told TheWrap at our 2024 TIFF Studio sponsored by Moët & Chandon and Boss Design.
His experience bonding with his son over those skits became the inspiration for “K-Pops,” .Paak’s directorial debut which he also stars in alongside his son. In the film, .Paak plays BJ, a drummer whose musical career falls on the rocks. With nowhere else to go, he is convinced to travel to South Korea and work on a pop idol show.
It’s at that show where he meets Tae Young, a young K-Pop performer competing as a contestant who turns out to be BJ’s son from a brief relationship he had with a Korean woman more than a decade before.
Despite the shock, BJ and Tae begin to bond, as the former uses his musical talents to help Tae win the show and achieve K-Pop stardom. But BJ’s own hunger for fame soon arises, threatening to destroy the new start he has found.
Rasheed praised his father for being a “comedy genius” and for finding tonal balance in “K-Pops,” bringing the humor that the two of them explored in the YouTube skits they did together while leaving room for the more emotional moments between father and son to breathe.
“We want to make people laugh and we want to have a well-balanced movie and he’s really good at balancing that when he’s got his directing hat on,” the teen said.
“K-Pops” is currently seeking U.S. distribution. Watch the interview in the clip above.
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