Carlos Miller and Lil Rel Howery on new horror comedy Haunted Heist

Welcome back everyone. The horror comedy genre just got crazier. Haunted Heist follows four estranged friends who reunite to steal a 20 million dollar dagger from a mansion with a whole lot of history. I recently sat down with the movie stars Rel Howery and Carlos Miller and the shenanigans started before the interview could even begin. Well the horror comedy genre just got crazier. Haunted Heist follows four estranged friends who reunite to steal a 20 million dollar dagger from a mansion with a lot of history. So the movie stars are here with us now on the couch so let's welcome Rel and Carlos. Thank you guys so much for being here. Thank you for having us. We can clap. Round of applause. We did good. You did. You did because I watched the trailer and I didn't know where it was going and then somehow it ended up with a grandma ghost. First of all, I never thought about a grandma ghost and especially not in this way. Who came up with that? Well shout out to Carl Reed, our writer, and our producers Josh and Shawn. They was their concept and then Carl wrote it and then you know I put my spin on everything so like just even the grandma ghost thing is something you know as time went on we kind of started playing with. So then let's start talking about why horror comedies do so well. I thought about this this morning because I was thinking about like uh you know you know people when you see like some of the evil stuff that's happening I just think it's funny. Oh I was rebuking Satan as I watched. Yeah but I'm glad you said that. That's I think that's how you do it though like by making fun like I feel like I'm bullying Satan in this movie and so you know when people like is it like no it's kind of just really show you how stupid it's kind of like saying you got nothing this looks stupid. Yeah. Awesome well well let's go ahead and just start talking about how we've had Jess Hilarious on here and she of course was on Rel the TV show. Apparently a little birdie tells me that the inspiration for her character was Tiffany Haddish, a good friend of yours, and she works with you in this movie. So what's it like working with such a good friend? It was great working with Tiffany. It's great Carlos is another one of my friends and like we all came up together so it was fun. Batches. These were personal phone calls I had to make for them to do this so for all of them to say yes I really appreciate it but yeah yeah it's crazy yeah Jess' character was based off Tiffany. Perfect I wanted to get that confirmation from the man himself. So let's point to you now another notable figure we've had on this couch Jason Weaver. I know that you guys he hinted are going to be working together quite a bit. He told us about Leave It to Weaver. What else can we expect from you guys? We're going to be producing a show for him. He wants to get into the media podcast space so my company 85 South we reached out he reached out and we've been finalizing the production deal because I mean we gave him a lifetime achievement award because he's done some great things with being young Michael Jackson to being the voice of young Simba and he still can hit those notes and it's like bro he's so many things that he wants to do and it's just like but I want to do it with y'all so big shout out to Jason Weaver. We got a lot of stuff that we're working on. But Carlos I want to talk about just this whole idea of being a comedian and trying to become successful in that regard. Is there anything that you feel like people don't tell those who are getting into this business? That your work doesn't just have to be funny and jokes. You can use these opportunities to parlay it into writing, to producing, to getting behind the camera. It's so many opportunities that you can create for yourself and you can use stand-up as your vehicle to get to those opportunities. Don't just limit yourself to trying to be the comedic delivery all the time. It's so many more opportunities in the comedy world that you don't have to be front and center. Okay my final question for you guys. If there's someone who's watching this interview and for whatever reason they're not familiar with your work, what is it that you want them to take away about you? Don't take nothing away. Add something to this. Well first of all go see this movie. First and foremost. It's very important in a lot of ways but like it was fun to cast fellow stand-up comics and have them act because Carlos is killing this. Watching his range in this movie is absolutely crazy and I think it's been a long time since we've seen a breakout role from a stand-up comic and I believe that's what this is for Carlos. This is my directorial debut and I'm thankful again for my friends saying yes so it made it a lot easier for me to transition into that especially casting people who care about you winning. Well I think this is going to be filled with memes. I can just anticipate it. Yeah thank you both so much for your time. Please come back to Good Day. I will. This is great. I really enjoy talking to you. I watch Good Day Atlanta because I live here. I get all my news updates and traffic updates and what's going on in the city and Falcon scores and all types of stuff so big shout out to Fox 5 Atlanta. Oh that's music to our ears. Well that was a fun conversation. The horror comedy film Haunted Heist is in theaters today.