Jordan Peele on working with 'the cutest cat of all time' in 'Keanu'

Jordan Peele stars in Keanu, but he’ll be the first to admit that his costar is the one really stealing the spotlight. And no, he’s not talking about Keegan-Michael Key.

“If you’re on screen with a kitten, everyone is going to be looking at that kitten, including me,” Peele said, speaking about the feline star of Keanu. “I’m in the movie, it’s my first time on screen, I have the opportunity to see myself, I’m over here looking “What’s this guy doin’? What’s this guy doin’?'”

For Peele, working with an adorable kitten was equivalent to working with a certain beloved heartthrob: “Having a kitten on screen is a little bit like having a tiny Ryan Gosling in your arms. You’re done.”

Although the Keanu team set up an “intense audition process” to find “the cutest cat of all time,” the movie wasn’t always going to be about a kitten. In fact, fans just as easily could have been watching a movie named Sigourney about a dog instead.

“It was difficult to figure out which animal to go with,” Peele said. “At one point we were thinking it could be a dog named Sigourney, it could be a seal named Seal, we landed on Keanu and it all came together, it just worked.”

Keanu is in theaters now.