Yahoo Lifestyle Anderson .Paak on Directing His Son in ‘K-Pops!’ and His Future With Bruno Mars: ‘Silk Sonic Always Has a Place to Put Out More Music’
Anderson .Paak strode into the Variety studio at Toronto Film Festival wearing a radiant smile, and before the cameras started rolling he began spinning a pillow on his finger like a basketball.
“This is a couch potato trick,” he laughed, as his 13-year-old son Soul Rasheed watched in awe.
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It’s fitting that .Paak can’t keep his hands still. With a thriving music career (both as a solo artist and as one-half of the four-time Grammy winning duo Silk Sonic), a lucrative alter ego in DJ Pee Wee and a side hustle (if you can call that) as a restaurateur, .Paak is constantly adding items to his resume.
The latest of which is “K-Pops!,” .Paak’s first feature film, which he directed and acts in alongside Rasheed.
“It was kind of tough sometimes for me to turn off the dad and put on the director,” the 38-year-old multi-hyphenate told Variety. “I just felt like sometimes it was tough for me to separate, because I wanted to also be there for him as a dad, make sure he was comfortable, but also get the best take I could — so that he enjoys it, so we can watch something that we can be proud of in the end.”
Rasheed concurred. “It was my dad, so he kind of knew my preferences and my weaknesses and strengths,” he said of .Paak, who plays his dad in the film. “The bond is real. It’s more authentic that way.”
In “K-Pops!,” .Paak plays BJ, a washed-up musician who travels to South Korea to work on a pop idol show, where he meets Tae Young (Rasheed), competing to become the country’s next superstar. When BJ meets Tae’s mother, he realizes they had a brief relationship more than a decade ago, and that Tae is the son he never knew he had.
“It was my son who inspired [‘K-Pops!’],” .Paak said. He wrote the bulk of the film during the pandemic, when live music halted and he returned home to spend time with his family. “My house was being taken over by K-pop at the time, and BTS was all I ever heard. And that’s when I posed the question: ‘I know you know about BTS, but what do you know about BET?'”
First, the father-son duo created YouTube skits, which allowed .Paak to truly see how “naturally talented” Rasheed was at acting.
“I was like, “Son, I want to write a movie for us. This could be funny,'” .Paak remembered. “I wanted to direct it because I didn’t want anybody else to play my son but my son, and I knew I wanted to be there with him.”
As for Rasheed, “I didn’t have any passion [for acting] whatsoever before we filmed,” he said, as .Paak reached over to fix his suit collar. “I didn’t really see myself as an actor, but when we started filming, I was like, ‘Oh, I have a little potential.'”
The film also stars Yvette Nicole Brown, Jee Young Han and Jonnie “Dumbfoundead” Park. With a little help from his dad, Rasheed also recalled meeting some cool celebrities while at TIFF, including Salma Hayek, Don Cheadle and Selena Gomez.
On the music side, .Paak has kept busy with recent collaborations with Fred Again, Cordae and Gwen Stefani, with whom he performed the official song of the 2024 Olympics. He also reunited with Knxwledge earlier this year to release their second album as NxWorries, eight years after they debuted with the well-received “Yes Lawd!”
Asked if there have been conversations about a second Silk Sonic album, .Paak said he hung out with Bruno Mars recently and came out during one of his live shows.
“I think that Silk Sonic always has a place to put out more music, and we’ll always have that group and always have that outlet to do it,” .Paak said. “So, we’ll just see. Time will tell.”
So, Silk Sonic isn’t going to retire after receiving four Grammy nominations — and winning them all?
“Nah,” .Paak said, flashing that signature smile.
Variety‘s Toronto Film Festival studio is sponsored by J.Crew and SharkNinja.
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