As students at TCNJ, Keith and Kenny Lucas \u201907 were bookish, set to go to law school, and not all that funny. \u201cI think people saw us as serious,\u201d says Kenny. They returned to the college in October 2021, now brilliant comedians, law school dropouts, and co-writers of the Oscar-nominated film Judas and the Black Messiah<\/em>.<\/p>\n During their visit, The Lucas Brothers headlined several campus events: Lorna Johnson-Frizell, interim dean of the School of the Arts and Communication, led a master class discussion between them and a small group of students from the philosophy, African American studies, and communication studies departments that focused on several specific scenes from Judas<\/em>. A broader conversation about the film and their life was held in Kendall Hall and moderated by professors Christopher Fisher and Piper Kendrix Williams.<\/p>\n Lucky for us, the twins also sat down with TCNJ Magazine to talk philosophy, the red carpet, their bond as brothers, and their affection for Jimmy Fallon.<\/p>\n TCNJ Magazine: When you were TCNJ students, did you ever think you would be where you are now? TM: Such good writers, in fact, that you were nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay for Judas and the Black Messiah<\/em>. The film is about FBI informant William O\u2019Neal who infiltrates the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party to gather intelligence on its chairman, Fred Hampton, who is then assassinated. But it was here, at TCNJ, where you got the idea for the film, right? TM: Was the Academy Awards ceremony as glamorous and exciting as it looks on TV? TM: Let\u2019s talk about your comedy. Before Judas<\/em>, you were primarily comedians. And it was something you discovered and decided to pursue right before you were each set to graduate from law school. TM: We hear Jimmy Fallon helped you get your start. TM: How does where you come from play out in your work? TM: You are also working on a remake of Revenge of the Nerds<\/em>, right? TM: You guys wear lot of hats. But it seems like above all you\u2019re writers. What\u2019s that process like? Does one of you start and the other writes the next sentence?
\nKenny Lucas: No.
\nKeith Lucas: Not at all.
\nKenny: Back then, I was probably terrified of an exam coming up or something. There was a calculus exam I had, that I bombed. I really learned a lot about myself from that.
\nTM: Like what?
\nKenny: That I am really bad at calculus.
\nTM: Is that why you became philosophy majors?
\nKenny: Our first year at TCNJ, we were political science majors and we didn\u2019t love it. It was a lot of statistics and like I said, I don\u2019t like math. Keith actually came across philosophy.
\nKeith: I was helping with a book drive for student government, and I was doing a terrible job at it because I was reading books instead of giving them out. I stumbled across Plato\u2019s Five Dialogues<\/em> and it just blew my mind.
\nKenny: We signed up for philosophy our sophomore year, and it changed our lives. It opened up our worlds to guys, mostly guys, who pontificated on things that we just never thought of before: What is real? What\u2019s the nature of being? What\u2019s the nature of justice?
\nKeith: That\u2019s why I love philosophy. It pushes you to question everything, for better or worse.
\nKenny: Yes, it does. Why am I paying taxes? Should I pay rent? [Laughs]. But that kind of questioning is fundamental to our creative process. It\u2019s made us much better writers.<\/p>\n
\nKeith: Judas<\/em> started here. We were in a class with professor Chris Fisher that covered African American history from 1865 to the present.
\nKenny: We learned about Fred Hampton, and I was just like, \u201cWhy is this story not widely known?\u201d I mean, it\u2019s so fascinating. You have espionage, you have the FBI. You have the makings of a classic thriller.
\nKeith: The story was overwhelming. I can\u2019t believe the government assassinated a citizen for exercising his constitutional rights. It stayed with me.
\nKenny: Once we got into entertainment, we felt it was our duty to bring this story to a broader national audience. And, coincidentally, we took a philosophy and film course and we studied The Conformist<\/em>, a Bernardo Bertolucci movie. It had a huge influence on how we structured Judas<\/em>.
\nKeith: So those two key parts, that all happened at TCNJ.
\nKenny: Without TCNJ, we would\u2019ve never been nominated for an Oscar.<\/p>\n
\nKeith: It was too much stress. I had a strong inclination that we were not going to win, because if you follow it, you know which movie is getting the most buzz.
\nKenny: I thought we were going to win. And then they brought out one award. I was like, \u201cWe have four writers. Maybe we\u2019re just going to share one.\u201d
\nKeith: It was also in Los Angeles, near skid row. We\u2019re driving to the Oscars, and there\u2019s homeless people everywhere. And I was like, \u201cThis juxtaposition is unsettling.\u201d
\nKenny: And we made a movie about class. It just felt very uncomfortable.
\nTM: Judas<\/em> was a long time coming, but it seemed to hit audiences at a meaningful moment for racial injustice. Was that intentional?
\nKenny: The struggle for liberation for African Americans, it\u2019s an ever-present topic because even to this day we are sometimes treated as second-class citizens.
\nKeith: The movie-making process is so nebulous, you don\u2019t know when things are going to get made and things can derail at any time. We were just fortunate for it to come out right around this time, because with George Floyd and so many other murders, our story just resonated. But we couldn\u2019t have predicted that.
\nKenny: I like to say we\u2019re comedians. So we have great timing.<\/p>\n
\nKenny: I didn\u2019t really connect with law intellectually. I couldn\u2019t fathom doing it for another 30 years. I was at NYU and I was right across the street from the Comedy Cellar. And I would go there to work through some of my issues that I was having with law school. And I fell in love with comedy and entertainment and I thought, \u201cI could see myself doing this.\u201d
\nKeith: He convinced me somehow, he just called me one day. I was at Duke.
\nKenny: I said, \u201cOne day, we\u2019re going to get nominated for an Oscar.\u201d That was my pitch.
\nKeith: I thought he was crazy at the time, but I didn\u2019t really have the passion for law either.
\nTM: Would your friends say you had a reputation for being funny?
\nKenny and Keith: No!
\nKeith: Our humor is very witty at times, which means we\u2019re not like \u2026
\nKenny: \u2026 We\u2019re not like laugh-out-loud funny. We were never class clowns.
\nKeith: We were very academic. We wanted to be professors.<\/p>\n
\nKenny: We love Jimmy. He gave us our big break in 2012.
\nKeith: We auditioned to do stand-up on The Tonight Show, and we didn\u2019t think we were going to get it \u2019cause we only had five minutes of material.
\nKenny: We literally had five minutes. I was like, \u201cIf you guys don\u2019t like this, we can\u2019t give you any more.\u201d Somehow we got it, and Jimmy has been really supportive since.<\/p>\n
\nKeith: We grew up in Newark, New Jersey, and people see it as a negative place, but people were always laughing, always joking around. Even in the most tragic circumstances, you need jokes to sort of get through it. Comedy plays a large role in dealing with tragedy, so they\u2019re intimately connected.
\nTM: You talk a lot about having a tough childhood. What aspects of that do you think have contributed to your success?
\nKenny: It\u2019s just grit and grind. Our mom worked three jobs. She was a single mom. She instilled in us the principle of being a hard worker and never letting disadvantages take you out of that mindset.
\nKeith: We had a ton of support from aunts too. All of our aunts protected us and taught us values. Not just about work, but just trying to be decent human beings. And I think that has helped too. People tend to like us for whatever reason.
\nKenny: Some people [laughs].
\nKeith: We\u2019re writing a movie right now that\u2019s about Newark and our relationship with our father. We\u2019re working with producer Judd Apatow and he pushed us to probe that. We didn\u2019t want to talk about those feelings when we first started making films.
\nKenny: It was difficult to wade into that heavy, emotional stuff: The idea of not having your father around and growing up as men in a place that was very tough. It was hard to mine for humor, but Judd pushed us to go there.
\nKeith: We just finished the script, and hopefully it will come out in 2023.<\/p>\n
\nKenny: We just finished that script.
\nKeith: We\u2019re acting in that one. Acting, writing, producing.<\/p>\n
\nKenny: We\u2019re intense. We outline like crazy. So much of a script depends on how structured it is and how logical it is, which we learned from philosophy. We\u2019ll spend weeks, months \u2026
\nKeith: \u2026 years \u2026
\nKenny: \u2026 years, sometimes, just perfecting the outline. And then from the outline, once we feel comfortable with it, we can branch off. I can write a scene, he\u2019ll write a scene, and then we\u2019ll swap.
\nKeith: We\u2019re constantly tweaking. Constantly rewriting.
\nKenny: And we like to write in different mediums. We\u2019ll write sketch, we\u2019ll write animation, we\u2019ll write TV.
\nKeith: It doesn\u2019t matter what it is, as long as we\u2019re writing every day and working on language.
\nKenny: And every day, I feel like I\u2019m a fraud. I swear, when we got nominated for an Oscar, I was like, \u201cNo, this is not right. They made a mistake.\u201d I emailed the Academy, \u201cTake it back.\u201d<\/p>\n