Piece by Piece Director Morgan Neville Will Never Use AI Again

Morgan Neville knows not everything we talk about will make it into this story. After making dozens of documentaries, he understands that in order to be told properly, the best stories have to leave some parts out.

That’s definitely true of Piece by Piece, his new “creative nonfiction” documentary about Pharrell Williams. Built using audio interviews with collaborators like Kendrick Lamar and Missy Elliott—many of which Neville conducted remotely during Covid-19 lockdowns—it’s a biopic of Williams’ life animated entirely with Lego. Because Williams’ career as a hitmaker spans 30-plus years, and given the fact that animation is expensive, Neville knew he had to leave some stuff out.

“People say, ‘Oh, the interviews are so great.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I used the good ones,’” he says, sitting in a restaurant off of Central Park, a few days before Piece by Piece’s New York premiere. “They don’t know all the interviews that I didn’t use or parts of interviews. So there’s that part of it too.”

So what pieces are missing? A story Williams told about getting a call from Michael Jackson, what happened when Justin Timberlake visited the Neptunes’ studio in Virginia Beach. It actually ends right as Williams is starting to get deep. But that’s the thing with movies: They can only tell you so much.

Same is true of this interview. Still, when WIRED sat down with Neville, we covered a lot, from his next movie about Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles era to why his experience using artificial intelligence on his Anthony Bourdain documentary made him swear off the tech for good.

Angela Watercutter: So, why Pharrell Williams? You’ve done a lot of music docs, but why did you pick him over any other subject?

Morgan Neville: He approached me.

Oh, well, that helps.

I wouldn’t have thought of doing a Pharrell documentary out of the blue, and honestly, I was kind of burnt out on doing music documentaries. It just felt like I’d kind of been there, done that.

Was there something about Pharrell that made you want to give a music doc another shot?

I’m actually way more interested in producers than I am artists, because artists tend to have a very similar story and they’re in their own little bubble. But producers have to navigate different worlds. I keep gravitating towards producers. On top of that, in our first meeting he said, “I want you to try and do a documentary about me, and when you’re done, I want you to do it again in Lego.”