From A/C to Run DMC
Actor Park’s former rap band inspired music in Netflix’s Always Be My Maybe
Always Be My Maybe Netflix Randall Park is quick to smile, generous with a compliment and has a voice as soothing as summer rain on a rooftop. The actor has also punched Keanu Reeves and lived to rap about it.
True, the pummelling was staged as part of the Netflix film Always Be My Maybe, but Reeves’s character was all up in his grill, man. Straight macking on the love of his life. John Wick or not — dude was asking for it.
To back up a little: Reeves plays a pretentious version of himself in Always Be My Baby, the guy that Ali Wong’s character Sasha goes gaga over while it’s clear to everyone else that she should be with Park’s character, Marcus, her childhood friend and now an air conditioner repairman and a parttime rapper.
In one tense double-date scene, Keanu dares Marcus to punch him and Marcus happily complies. Hence the song I Punched Keanu Reeves, which Marcus performs over the end credits. “I’m tellin’ you, for real / I punched Neo / He could duck bullets but he couldn’t duck me,” he raps. And later: “What an excellent adventure / I wouldn’t be surprised if Keanu’s wearing dentures.”
Oh, snap!
You’d think Reeves would be seething under that braggadocious burn. But Park says he couldn’t have been more gracious about the song.
“It kind of came in the last hour because we’d already had a cut of the film and an executive from Netflix came up with the idea of actually recording that song and playing it over the end credits,” says Park.
“We all thought it was a great idea, but we felt it would only be right to ask his permission so I reached out to him. From the beginning when he got on board, he totally understood what were going for and was totally game. But he did have a suggestion, that being to make it clear that this song is about Marcus and Sasha, and not just about Keanu Reeves.”
Park, who wrote the movie with Michael Golamco and longtime friend Wong, comes by rapping honestly. The band in Always Be My Maybe, Hello Peril, is based on a band Park was in after college, called Ill Again. Just like in the film, it was staunchly rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area music scene.
“We were big fans of The Roots and that ’90s-era hip hop, and we formed this live band with instruments — very much like the band you see in the movie,” says Park.
“Back then we were doing it for fun, and Ali would come to those shows. While we were writing the script, we were trying to figure out what Marcus’s thing was. It just made sense to incorporate this band in the movie and answer the question, what if the real-life band just kept playing into our adulthood?”
Park’s time on the mic for Always Be My Baby prompts the question of whether he’d be down to reunite his old band, maybe drop a track while his ABC comedy Fresh Off the Boat is taking a break from filming. “Not at all. I’m too old, and I don’t have the energy!” says Park, laughing.