Morgan Neville’s documentary about Pharrell Williams, Piece by Piece, tells the story of the music superstar through Lego animations, a form that taps into Pharrell’s early creative expression. “I was given Lego sets as a child, and that was a really amazing platform for me to allow my imagination to flourish and to learn things about myself,” Williams said. A host of Pharrell’s collaborators were interviewed for the film, including Jay-Z, Gwen Stefani, Justin Timberlake, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Pusha-T, and Timbaland. But they intentionally weren’t told they would appear in the film as Legos.
“We purposely did not tell anyone that that would be the finished product. We wanted people to just answer the questions and really give their full, unedited reactions,” Williams said. “Because if we would’ve said, ‘Okay, this is going to be in Lego,’ then people would have sort of curved what they were saying … we didn’t want them to be influenced by what we wanted. We wanted the purest part. And I feel like part of the magic of what makes this film pop the way it does is because it’s so vivid and it’s not scripted.” (Variety)