Pierre Charles on They Cloned Tyrone, Inventing Anna and Scuba Diving

July 16, 2024

Soundtracks, Scores and More Staff

As a composer, he’s contributed scores to hit shows such as Bridgerton and Euphoria, as well as Space Jam: A New Legacy. Pierre was the composer on Inventing Anna and most recently East New York, a CBS series. The latest film to feature his music, They Cloned Tyrone, is available now on Netflix.

BY JASON LAZARCHECK

 

Pierre Charles is new to scuba diving. He was certified in May. Very recently, he received his advanced certification.

We were 75-feet underwater off the coast of Catalina, and I started to feel a bit of anxiety… We had been kicking a lot against a current and I was kind of feeling a little air-starved. My heart rate started picking up and I was like, “I’m getting a little nervous and I shouldn’t be, but I’m feeling anxious right now.” What brought me out of that anxiety was the fact that A) I can’t just shoot up to the surface, and B) I’ve done this before…

It’s somewhat in my DNA, because my father’s from the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans. It feels like it’s part of my blood, naturally. I was banging away at the piano at one year old, I started taking violin lessons at three. Decided to hell with that when I was four… And I started taking piano lessons when I was six or seven years old. I was taking Suzuki classical lessons. 

Pierre is not new to music. As a composer, he’s contributed scores to hit shows such as Bridgerton and Euphoria, as well as Space Jam: A New Legacy. Pierre was the composer on Inventing Anna and most recently East New York, a CBS series. The latest film to feature his music, They Cloned Tyrone, is available now on Netflix.

Pierre has risen quickly to become one of Hollywood’s youngest award-winning composers. Before that, he studied jazz and played at the highest level. Music has always been part of him.

It’s somewhat in my DNA, because my father’s from the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans. It feels like it’s part of my blood, naturally. I was banging away at the piano at one year old, I started taking violin lessons at three. Decided to hell with that when I was four… And I started taking piano lessons when I was six or seven years old. I was taking Suzuki classical lessons. 

The piano has been his weapon of choice ever since. Pierre is from Wisconsin, where he pursued jazz as a teen and competed internationally. He studied jazz at Michigan State then USC, all the while performing and writing jazz. Pierre didn’t exactly decide to hell with it, but even as he pursued his advanced degrees in jazz, he made an active shift away from being a full-time jazz musician and started scoring films.

 

Pierre’s love for stories and storytelling led him to score student films at the Comm Arts college at Michigan State, as well as find videos online to re-score, such as commercials, and build up his skill as a composer. Determined to learn and grow, Pierre researched composers and their biographies to understand how they got into the film industry. He got into the jazz master’s program at USC but also took screen scoring and video game scoring classes as his electives.

Now, only five years later, Pierre is a professional composer who’s worked on hit shows and major movies. In his tidy Culver City studio, he sits calmly in his chair next to his desk by his sleek touchscreen monitor and just opposite his Yamaha upright piano. Clearly Pierre is a talented musician, but pure talent doesn’t fully account for his successful rise up the ranks. In addition to his musical and storytelling ability, Pierre is able to steady himself whenever he’s taking on a new challenge. He’s comfortable being out of his depth.

When I’m in the thick of it, working on a project, and there’s three other projects going on, and it’s going crazy and there’s a bunch of notes on this project and a bunch of notes on this project, and all the schedules are moving around, and I’m trying to manage my team, and also have my own personal life and go to the gym and cook dinner at night, I have that same moment…

The anxiety of being 75-feet underwater. Kicking against the current. Feeling air-starved… Pierre shouldn’t be. He has the chops. He’s delivered the goods. He’s done this before.

I’m OK, because I have been OK before. That’s what I’m always thinking about when I’m in the middle of these projects. Especially when I start a project. Every time I start a project, I’m like, “I don’t know how to write music. How did I get hired? I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s a clean slate every single time.” I have to sometimes listen to past projects to remind myself I have done it before. To know I can do it again.

Working on They Cloned Tyrone, Pierre does it again. The sci-fi comedy, directed by Juel Taylor and starring John Boyega, Teyonah Parris, and Jamie Foxx, is a wildly entertaining movie, and it’s available to stream now on Netflix.

I actually co-scored that. I was brought onto that film way late towards the end. They had another composer… I ended up writing a lot of minutes of score, but basically the middle and whole reel six.

In other words, Pierre contributed a good deal of music to the middle and end of the film, and he did this all in just four weeks. The other composer, Desmond Murray, contributed score to other parts of the film.

I’d been following Kris Bowers career for so long as a jazz musician… Maybe I should reach out to him and see if he needs an assistant because he’s fitting the mold of what I see myself as: a pianist and a composer. He was young. He’s Black. He fit everything that I saw myself as.

When asked what Day One on an assignment like that is like, Pierre said, “Shut up and listen.” He was dropped right into the middle of a wildly original yet challenging project and once again rose to the occasion. Even when the film was recut at the last-minute, Pierre contributed valuable revisions. Like the film itself, Pierre’s experience working on it was a wild ride, but seeing the end result at the premiere was, in his words, “insane.”

The point of the film is you don’t really know what time period it takes place in. They’re driving cars made in the 70s and 80s, and they’re dressed like it’s a Blaxploitation film. And the scan back on the actual picture looks like you’re watching a 15mm film from the 70s. Because some vehicles are modern day, and some are old-school; and some people’s costumes are modern day; and some of the music you’re hearing as source is modern day, but some of the music is old school. I think that was Juel’s artistic approach. So then there’s some cues that sound like Thundercat, and there are some cues I wrote that sound like a 70s cop show. When it came to writing for that style, I had to really digest a lot of different scores and sounds I have not been accustomed to, like I had to check out Luke Cage, 70s cop show music, the drumming patterns on those, and all that to really get what they wanted out of that.

Pierre is quick to acknowledge the many positive creative collaborations he’s shared with directors and other artists, and the very first name he mentions while discussing his own career is Kris Bowers. Bowers is the composer of films such as Green Book, King Richard, and Bad Hair and series including Bridgerton, Mrs. America, Dear White People, and When They See Us, and, like Pierre, Bowers is also an accomplished pianist. Pierre hoped to connect with him.

I’d been following Kris Bowers career for so long as a jazz musician… Maybe I should reach out to him and see if he needs an assistant because he’s fitting the mold of what I see myself as: a pianist and a composer. He was young. He’s Black. He fit everything that I saw myself as.

When Pierre completed his master’s in jazz, he was determined to connect with top composers. He shadowed artists and mixers at Han Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions, such as Rupert Gregson-Williams and Forest Christenson. One day in the studio there, Pierre emailed a professor from Michigan State named Etienne Charles (no relation), who worked with Kris Bowers when they were in New York, going to Juilliard. Five minutes later, Pierre’s professor got back to him.

I was shocked that he did it so quickly… He connected us right away, like five minutes later, over email. I connected with Kris. I basically bugged him for the next three months, four months, until he hired me as his assistant.

Working for Kris Bowers, Pierre devoted himself as an assistant, earning Bowers’s trust and learning as much as possible from the busy composer. After four months, while continuing to do assistant work, Pierre began to contribute additional music of his own to the many projects on Bowers’s slate: Bridgerton, Bad Hair, When They See Us, Mrs. America, and Space Jam: A New Legacy.

I had to quickly learn how to write, and when I look back, I did not really know how to write. I didn’t really know how to write! I listen to some of that music… What the hell was I writing? I had to quickly adapt and learn and learn on the job quickly, because there’s a lot of deadlines and a lot of stuff to get done. He put a lot of trust in me to let me do that, for sure. Once I started getting these additional music credits, it really helped me a lot. I was definitely fortunate to be writing that quickly. But I had to study. I had to study a lot. I had to take in a lot of different music and knowledge and learn how to be a composer that can write for Kris and sound like Kris. Through osmosis, I was able to take in a lot and learn on the job, but it was definitely a shift in gear because I had to come from being a college-level writer into being a professional writer which took some months. It was a lot of hard work.

Soon, however, Pierre made the leap from being an assistant, the same way he managed to connect with Kris Bowers in the first place, in part through his talent, but also through his initiative and his ability to take on new challenges. Pierre’s relationships and connections are hard-earned. He delivers the goods, because he’s comfortable being out of his depth. And he’s comfortable being out of his depth, because he’s done this before.

My jazz background is always in play when it comes to creating ideas quickly, because when it comes to being a composer, you’re on a deadline. You can’t spend a week trying to get a melody down. You have to do it quickly, and being a jazz musician, I feel like my brain is already in that space because we were taught to improvise on the spot over a set of chord changes. Everyone is going around and soloing on the bandstand.

As a professional. Pierre admires many composers: Lorne Balfe, Hans Zimmer, and Harry Gregson-Williams, Ludwig Göransson and his Black Panther soundtrack, Cristobal Tapia de Veer and his White Lotus score, and Daniel Pemberton and his cutting-edge writing. In Pierre’s studio, he swivels his chair toward a brand-new Moog synthesizer that just arrived the day before.

With some projects I’m being pitched for I’m constantly trying to scheme an approach to how I would make that score unique… The landscape of scoring is really changing so much now. It’s not just a classic score now. You’re sampling weird crazy sounds and finding found objects around the studio. You know, getting weird with synths. I’m just trying to really expand the palate and get really strange and weird with my music and push the envelope.

The CBS series, East New York, was Pierre’s first solo television show. Although it was a more straightforward police drama with traditional commercial breaks to score towards, the sound the producers were after for the score was neo-soul. Pierre was able to flex his jazz muscles. He drew from the rich harmonic palate of his academic and performance background to imbue the broadcast procedural with a signature soulful energy.

Even though most of his other projects call for a musical palette outside of jazz, Pierre’s jazz training contributes to his work as a composer.

My jazz background is always in play when it comes to creating ideas quickly, because when it comes to being a composer, you’re on a deadline. You can’t spend a week trying to get a melody down. You have to do it quickly, and being a jazz musician, I feel like my brain is already in that space because we were taught to improvise on the spot over a set of chord changes. Everyone is going around and soloing on the bandstand.

When it’s your turn to solo, you can’t just sit there and think about something. You gotta just start playing.  And that trained me to be the sort of composer that can just… I’m constantly hearing melodies in my head… It’s kind of in the background. It’s not like I’m walking down the street just like… I constantly can hear melodies going through my head randomly. Rhythms… I think it’s because I came out of this musical background and musical world where you’re always creating. It’s not like a classical musician where you’re interpreting music that’s already written. Jazz musicians have to create on the spot all the time, and I feel as a composer that’s what my job is. So I’m always drawing from that background.

Pierre often vocalizes and records the melodies in his head as voice notes on his phone, and he’s always tapping a counter-rhythm, but he admitted that when he starts a project, everything goes away. Like any storyteller, Pierre faces the blank page, but working in TV and film, he always has a collaborator. Whether it’s a director or showrunner, Pierre believes in building trust as the key to getting on the same page, and he works hard to earn trust through listening and quality creative contributions.

Aristotle Torres, he’s such a great writer, that when I read the script, I could already tell where he was going dramatically and emotionally. And musically, for that matter. When I met with him for the first time, we just had this instant connection. He told me where his head was, and I told him where my head was after reading the script, and we were both in the same headspace.

Not only can they trust that I’ll get the job done and get this in to them on time, but I’m going to see their vision alongside them and really nail down what they’re going for in the first place. And sometimes what they’re going for in the first place, that will be totally different by the end of the project. They’ll shift their thoughts and their approach as well. So you do a dance with them and change gears alongside them and make the process as efficient as possible.

For Pierre, the collaborative process often begins with the given script or cut. He identifies the drama, tone, and emotion for himself, then actively listens to the storyteller to understand their vision. His collaborators don’t always know how to communicate in musical terms, but Pierre acts as an interpreter, appreciating what they’re trying to say during their initial meeting or in their notes throughout the process.

It can definitely be tricky when not only do they not know how to say it musically, but they also don’t know what they want.

This wasn’t the case on the upcoming film, Story Ave. The feature debut from director Aristotle Torres will be out in October, starring Asante Blackk and Luis Guzmán. Story Ave is about a kid in the Bronx in a graffiti gang. Stuck between two identities, will he leave to go make something of himself as an artist? Pierre connected to the story right away.

Aristotle Torres, he’s such a great writer, that when I read the script, I could already tell where he was going dramatically and emotionally. And musically, for that matter. When I met with him for the first time, we just had this instant connection. He told me where his head was, and I told him where my head was after reading the script, and we were both in the same headspace.

To appreciate a director’s vision for a film from the script stage, both musically and dramatically, is rare, but Pierre was grateful for the serendipitous connection. This made the creative process easy, and the work flourished on Story Ave.

Another one of Pierre’s upcoming projects was the opposite, a much more common experience. TV and film composers are often thrust into situations with challenging constraints and confusing feedback, like this project.

 

One of those muscle-flexing, teamwork, skill-building projects. Where there’s a lot of notes and temp-chasing. But we got the job done.

Like most Hollywood composers, Pierre works hard to solve the problem of post-production schedules that involve tight timelines or dates changing on the fly, or both. He also juggles multiple projects at once.

Really, the hardest part is not the writing of the music. It’s managing the studio. Managing your own team… Managing schedules. Doing all the other stuff that’s not creative or fun. When it comes to writing, that’s the fun part of the job. I’ve been lucky enough not to have any instances where I’ve been fired or there’s been bad blood or anything like that. They always say you’ve finally made it when you’ve gotten fired from a gig. So maybe I need to. I haven’t any instances where the actual struggle part of the job has been the creative part of the job.

Pierre finds calm in that struggle, controlling his anxiety like he’s scuba diving. Ultimately, he’s motivated to write music and tell stories about the human experience, and the ups and downs of managing people, time, and expectations is part of it.

The humanities and history, specifically, fascinate Pierre. In school, AP US History was his favorite non-music class.

I’m on YouTube every night. My girlfriend, she’s like, “Why are you so addicted to YouTube?” I really love history. When I was kid, I made it to state-level geography bee three times. It was me and a bunch of Indian and Asian kids. I was the only black kid there. Alex Trebek used to do the national geography bee. That was if you won State… But State was insane. I thought I was smart until I got to state, and the questions… These kids know the most insane trivia and facts about the world. Like, “This market, selling this particular type of food…” You had to name the country and city that this market was in. My dad was like, “Yeah, you don’t stand a chance.”

Pierre enjoys historical films like 1917 and Lincoln and period pieces like The Crown and Band of Brothers. He admires Ludwig Göransson’s work on the Black Panther soundtracks and hopes to compose music someday for a story about ancient Africa.

My DNA is within the music of the African diaspora, through the Caribbean and New Orleans, the syncopation with drumming, the clave, the two-three and the three-two clave feel, and West African drumming. It would be really cool to experiment with that kind of score. I’m Macedonian/Greek as well, so it would be cool to do something on Alexander the Great…”

For now, Pierre’s upcoming projects include Story Ave, Amazon Freevee’s Clean Slate, and Gonzo Girl, which premiered at TIFF in September 2023.

Gonzo Girl is a film about a struggling young writer who takes a job as the assistant to Hunter S. Thompson. The movie stars Camila Morrone, Willem Dafoe, and Patricia Arquette, and it is Arquette’s feature directorial debut.

Clean Slate is a Norman Lear comedy series starring Laverne Cox and George Wallace about an outspoken old-school father in Alabama and his proud determined trans daughter. Pierre has not composed music for many half-hour comedies, and for this story, he will incorporate more acoustic guitar.

Growing up, since I was a baby, my parents were playing soundtracks and musicals on every road trip, so I grew up hearing The Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, South Pacific, and Oklahoma. All those musicals on repeat.

Story Ave, a coming-of-age film by Aristotle Torres about a boy in a New York graffiti gang, was released last year. Pierre moved from his desk chair to the piano bench in order to play some of the score. His upright piano has the cover taken off, exposing all the hammers, so Pierre can hear the action more and feel more connected to the piano that way. The main theme from Story Ave tells its own story of boyhood youth and nostalgia through its simple sweet melody, like a lullaby but with real tension from minor keys.

A composer of any capacity, they tell a story. You listen to Tchaikovsky. You can close your eyes. And when you listen to his Nutcracker suite, what the dancers are doing on stage, they’re adding to it, but you can close your eyes and understand what’s going on. He was no TV and film composer. There was no film back then, but he was able to tell a story. Prokofiev was able to tell a story.  Mahler was able to tell a story. So the thing that ties us all together is the storytelling of being a composer. That’s music as a whole, whether it’s lyrical music or instrumental music. You could be a singer-songwriter and you wouldn’t be branded as a composer but you’re still telling a story. Our job is to tell a story, and as film composers we create a character that is not an actual character on screen but a sonic character. That’s why we create themes. When I’m writing music, I’m always thinking about my music as being like a sixth player on the team. A separate character that isn’t on screen but helps bring the film home. And without music, you could have the best acting in the world, but music really helps bring that film or TV show home.

At 29, Pierre is already an accomplished musician and composer with a busy slate of projects. He’s also an accomplished storyteller, contributing to the drama and comedy of dozens of movies and shows through his music. When Pierre shares what his earliest exposure to music was, it makes even more sense why he composes for the screen. His earliest musical memories are not jazz but actual musicals. Show tunes.

Growing up, since I was a baby, my parents were playing soundtracks and musicals on every road trip, so I grew up hearing The Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, South Pacific, and Oklahoma. All those musicals on repeat.

Classic Broadway musicals such as these are right at the intersection where story meets music, and that’s where Pierre Charles lives. He’s honed his skills as a jazz musician and developed an ear for the marriage between film and sound. Film and melody.

Pierre will continue to write music, tell stories, and push himself to new artistic places that may feel anxiety-inducing initially, but this is where he finds his calmness, at an uncomfortable depth. He can’t just shoot up to the surface. But he knows he’s done this before. And he values his collaborators and their vision for the story even more than his own music.

You have to get the job done. So it’s more or less just zooming out and bringing it all into focus. “You gotta just get this job done because a lot of people are relying on you,” and I’m blessed enough for all these people to be trusting me with their scores. So that in itself is enough encouragement to get me to the finish line.

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