Pharrell Williams Didn’t Want to Make a Movie About His Life—Unless It Came With LEGOs

About seven years ago, Pharrell Williams’s agents came to him with the idea of making a documentary about his life and career. But he turned down that idea quickly. “It was a thing where a lot of A-listers were doing documentaries and music, and I wanted nothing to do with it,” he tells Vanity Fair.

Williams finally came around, however, when he was told he could make the documentary any way he wanted. He came up with the unusual idea to do it with LEGOs. “I wanted to do it in LEGO because since our oldest son was a baby, I had been buying him LEGO sets because I used LEGO sets when I was a kid,” he says. “When we were about to do this, we had just had our triplets and I wanted them to know my story and understand my story and LEGO was the perfect platform to tell the story.”

Williams recruited veteran documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville to direct Piece by Piece, an animated film that traces Williams’s journey from growing up in Virginia Beach, Virginia, to becoming one of the most prolific music producers of all time and working with talent like Jay-Z, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Gwen Stefani. The film also explores the 13-time Grammy winner’s personal ups and downs, along with his collaboration with Chad Hugo, with whom he cofounded the Neptunes. It’s a fascinating look inside the mind of a creative genius, told with the magical realism you wouldn’t usually find in this genre of documentary.

Piece by Piece, which opens in theaters on October 11, forces this behind-the-scenes guy to step into the spotlight—even if it is in LEGO form. “I’m not nervous,” he says, “because my nerves are consumed with gratitude and just utter shock that we’re at this point right now.”

Vanity Fair: How did the LEGO part of this film pop into your head?

Pharrell Williams: I like doing things that don’t exist. Most of the time I’m met with “no”, but this was one of those ones where we just got all the yeses that we needed. We like to do the impossible, right? I think the impossible is so fun. But this film is the sum of a lot of yeses paired with unbelievable, above-and-beyond commitment, which is not promised to people who look like me.

Even down to when LEGO said yes, we had to go back and have a conversation with them, not about culture, but just about humanity. And to appeal to them that the fingers and the hands that put these pieces together worldwide, don’t all look the same. When you hear that word “nude,” it usually means one thing. It doesn’t really meet humanity in the intersection of how they are born and where they are in their lives. So thinking about skin color and facial features and hair textures, all of that is very important. Oftentimes there’s a word that’s been weaponized; it’s “woke,” right? I don’t know anybody that just wants to be asleep all day. REM is awesome.

LEGO must have had to make things from scratch for this, I assume?

This was definitely new. I mean, everything down from skin tones to Caesar haircuts to the hairline—things that people take for granted, but mean everything to people who look like me.

In the film, LEGO Morgan is interviewing LEGO Pharrell. Was it difficult for you to do those interviews?

Well, do you like listening to yourself on voicemail? A lot of musicians are used to that, they’re very good at it. I cringe because I’m such a perfectionist to begin with, and then I’m constantly judging myself. I’m my biggest critic and my biggest judge. My standards are so high, and I never feel like I measure up. So that’s why I’m a producer and not necessarily the biggest artist, you know what I mean? I step out and do things sometimes, but the breadth of my catalog is about production and writing for other people—standing next to other people.

So this has been different, but I know that those vulnerabilities and those things that make me cringe are what help people to understand my humanity and my humility. So it’s a part of the process, but it ain’t easy.

I love the way they captured the actual music you would make. That’s such an intangible thing, but the film makes it tangible. How did you decide that it would be those pulsating LEGOs?

When you’re hearing music, for me, I’m hearing the colors, and I’m seeing the chords. But like I said in the film, in your mind’s eye, it’s a different thing. It’s a combination of all of your senses working together to establish this perception. Things become shapes too, so it naturally makes sense with the LEGOs and the shapes.

What was it like the first time you saw your LEGO? Did he need adjusting, or was it right the first time you saw it?

No, we worked on it a lot. Because there’s the story in the LEGO world for the film, and then there is the toy that we have coming. It’s interesting because you’d think the IP, just all the departments just connect, but they don’t. They’re not as connected as you would assume they would be.

So when we’re working on the actual toy, and we’re working on the film, one version I like better than the other. And I was like, “Guys, I know that contractually there’s all this stuff and the way that you guys work, but I’m really sorry. I’m happy to go talk to the family. We’re using this one.” And so it was decided and everything was fine.

But yeah, the features are very important. Because there’s times when certain people would be spot-on, and then there are other times where you felt they weren’t. But that’s because not everybody has a square jaw line. There’s all these very specific things—and there’s no nose. So it’s interesting. But one of the things that’s really been nice is when people say they watch and they forget that they’re watching toys.

Was there anything that was part of your story, maybe in earlier versions, that you wished had gotten to stay in the movie, or things that got cut or changed as you went on?

Man, that wasn’t even a third of my catalog. [Laughs] And there were so many instances that could have gone in, but I trusted Morgan because he’s a master storyteller.

How did you know where to end the film? Because obviously you’re still living your story.

In my mind I kept thinking, “Man, but I’m doing this now and I’m doing that now. Let’s talk about this.” If it was up to me, it would’ve probably not been as fun to watch because maybe it would’ve been this egotistical meatloaf of just so many bits and pieces of it. But sometimes it’s just nice to be a butter knife and not a Swiss army knife—to really tell a concise story, A to Z, and make sure that we stick to the universal theme.

Because that’s the other thing too: I’m a Black man living in an incredibly colonized world. I’m the result of colonialism. It has to be bigger than that. Everybody needs to be able to see this and feel this. So I couldn’t have my ego take over, and that’s the reason why I felt Morgan was the right choice. Because he saw the universal thread that was necessary to be in there.