The Actor Who Delivered The Obama Line In ‘Get Out’ Had No Idea That It Was A Joke

Early on in Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning horror movie Get Out, the painfully Caucasian Dean (Bradley Whitford) leans over and tells his daughter’s African-American boyfriend that he would have voted for Obama for a third time if he could.

It’s one of the movie’s first big laugh lines — a neat encapsulation of the insidious racism peddled by congenial white boomers who listen to NPR, bemoan slavery at any chance they get, reckon loving Prince and Marvin Gaye is an integral part of their personality, and generally fetishize black communities as a way of avoiding their deep guilt. And it’s more evidence, if any was needed, of Peele’s great ear for dialogue. It’s funny because it’s real; because so many people have heard the sentiment of that line expressed before, in a multitude of different ways.

Not convinced? Well, how’s this for proof — when Bradley Whitford, the actor who played Dean, first came across the exchange in the script, he thought it was totally sincere.

“Yeah, what’s really funny to me is I worked on his campaigns,” Whitford explained in a recent GQ profile. “I love Obama. I didn’t even know that was a joke.”

Moreover, turns out that Whitford reckons he probably earnestly dropped the line in conversation with Peele himself, which may actually be its origin.

“I don’t know, but I probably said it to Jordan [Peele], without realizing that it’s the whitest thing a person could say.”

So there you have it: for all of the shocking, surprising, and distinctly otherworldly turns that Get Out makes, the whole thing is grounded in an acute sense of social realism. And hey, isn’t that what all great horror movies do? Set up pains and worries that you know, and then slowly, carefully and dramatically pull the rug out from underneath your feet?