Spoiler alert! The following post discusses important plot points and the ending of “They Cloned Tyrone” (streaming now on Netflix), so beware if you haven’t seen it yet.
A pimp, a prostitute and a drug dealer walk into a lab. But that premise sets up a conspiracy caper rather than a punchline.
“They Cloned Tyrone” is a “bootleg ‘Scooby-Doo’ movie,” director Juel Taylor jokes. It has all the seasoning to solve a flavorful mystery: soul, “Nancy Drew” and three of the most “ill-equipped detectives.”
“It’s Blaxploitation, a weird mystery movie and mixed with comedy,” John Boyega, who stars as grill-gleaming drug dealer Fontaine, says in an interview before the start of the Screen Actors Guild strike.
Pimp Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), a sex worker named Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) and Fontaine (Boyega) are tasked with saving the residents of their “trap” neighborhood, The Glen, from becoming clones in an underground governmental experiment to control Black people.
Taylor makes his directorial debut on a story he co-wrote. The movie will take you down the kind of winding roads that made “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” and “Get Out” treasures to watch.
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“They Cloned Tyrone” reveal early on that Fontaine, Slick Charles and Yo-Yo have uncovered a secret lab cloning Black Americans in The Glen. It’s up to them to figure out who, what, where, when and why.
The story is all from Taylor’s head, although the characters are archetypes of Black people in marginalized communities who often “aren’t given full stories and backgrounds,” Parris tells USA TODAY in an interview before the SAG-AFTRA strike. “We get the opportunity to dive in, but not without first making fun of and playing into these are stereotypes.”
Boyega says he built Fontaine around someone from his hometown in Southeast London: “I remember a guy called Kenneth (who) was like 6-foot-4, had grills and he looked tired most of the time.”
Immersing himself in the character taught the actor to “stay curious,” Boyega says. Although the movie is rooted in fiction, it has subtext implying the U.S. government tries to keep Black people under control via politics that harms minority communities.
“Woke is a bad word right now,” Boyega says. “They’re rinsing that word ‘woke,’ but stay woke, stay alive, stay aware of oneself, aware of your situation and circumstance and always notice when you’ve got yourself into a bit of a repetitive loop.”
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Is there a government experiment to control Black people’s minds by drugging hair products, fried chicken and grape juice? Are they being cloned over generations, slowly altering their DNA to ultimately make them white?
Boyega is certain he has a doppelganger somewhere. “Yeah, I do think they’re doing that,” he riffs when asked if he thinks clones are real. “But when it comes to human beings, I don’t know,” he adds, all pranking aside.
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Parris is a bit more skeptical. “I believe that there’s some truth to a lot of these conspiracy theories,” she says. “You just hope that people are following some code of ethics and being responsible, but … I don’t put anything past anybody.”
There has been no evidence of human cloning, according to the National Human Genome Research Institute and the National Library of Medicine.
Who is Tyrone?
The movie has a Marvel-esque mid-credits scene in which Boyega’s character hangs with friends as a news report about cloning experiments in The Glen plays in the background.
A clone that looks like him appears on the screen. “Hold up. Ain’t that you, Tyrone?” one of his friends asks. “They Cloned Tyrone” ends with a puzzled Tyrone while Erykah Badu’s reimagined “Tyrone” plays with new lyrics about mind control and cloning.
Who cloned Tyrone?
The “OG” Fontaine is an elderly scientist, and Tyrone is one of his clones.
In theory, the scientist cloned himself, but Taylor says it’s intentionally vague who started the secret program. “There’s a super, super, super-sneaky Easter egg in there as to who ‘they’ might be,” the director teases.
The “they” in question is MKUltra, a reference to a real-life illegal CIA operation (1953 to 1973) in which humans were experimented on to determine which drugs could be used to force confessions or brainwash. A few insignias and floating files with MKUltra labels are sprinkled throughout the movie.
Taylor went as far as making a redacted government file to use when pitching the movie.
Who is Olympia Black?
“Olympia Black” is the name used by the antagonists to activate the clones into fighting against Slick, Yo-Yo and Fontaine. The name feels important, but “there’s a lot of like Easter eggs buried in the movie and ironically, this is not one of them,” Taylor says. “It just rolled off the tongue.”
Olympia Black is a science fiction author, but she isn’t the reference for the phrase.
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Will there be a sequel to ‘They Cloned Tyrone’?
Boyega and Parris are an easy yes to the prospect of reprising their roles as Fontaine and Yo-Yo. The two shared fond memories of constant laughter on the set and Foxx playing Nicki Minaj out of a boombox backpack.
“Jamie is well and healing and taking whatever time he needs to do that. I think we all just want to see him well,” Parris says of her co-star, who has been recovering from an undisclosed medical complication. “Above all else, we just want him to be happy and I’m wishing him all the best on that journey.”
But it’s unlikely we’ll see more of the trio’s story, Taylor says. “I wouldn’t say zero percent chance. Me and (producer and writer) Tony Rettenmaier always joked that if we did a sequel, it would just be like the three of them trying to start a pizza shop. Just a totally different genre with no explanation.”
