Pharrell Williams never wanted a movie made about him. “Who wants to hear about me? I definitely don’t,” he tells Vogue. “I didn’t feel like there was anything interesting about me or my process. I’m so used to doing things with people I find so interesting. It was also voicemail syndrome—you don’t want to hear yourself talk.”
But when his agent persisted–with the magic words, “You can do it however you want”—Williams began to envision it all differently, as is his wont as a boundary-pushing multihyphenate renowned for his visionary innovation and vast influence not only in music, with 13 Grammys and 42 nominations over the past two decades, but also fashion, most recently as the men’s creative director of Louis Vuitton. (The recently announced 2025 Met Gala co-chair has also been nominated for an Oscar twice, for best original song for “Happy” from Despicable Me 2’s soundtrack and for best picture as a producer of Hidden Figures.) “I realized it could be less reflective and more an opportunity to be creative,” he says. “I wanted to be completely unconventional. And then it got interesting really quick.”
Piece by Piece canvasses Williams’s origin story and career entirely via Lego-based animation. It’s a glorious visual symphony that comes alive through delightful re-creations of iconic music videos (a bricky rendition of Wreckx-n-Effect’s extremely-1992 “Rump Shaker” video, sax-playing sea siren and all, is a personal favorite); kaleidoscopic washes of color illustrating Williams’s synesthesia; and the visualization of beats as kinetic blocky clusters, helping to concretize what still remains a mystery to many people: what exactly a music producer does. Not to mention a starry ensemble of collaborators weighing in, all rendered as lovingly detailed, instantly recognizable Lego Minifigures: Jay-Z, Daft Punk, Gwen Stefani, Missy Elliott, Kendrick Lamar, and Snoop Dogg among them. The result is not only an uplifting tale of how a daydreamer from the Virginia Beach projects became a renaissance man for our times but also a refreshingly self-aware exploration of creativity and finding one’s purpose.
Five years ago Williams approached director Morgan Neville, winner of the 2013 best-documentary Oscar for 20 Feet from Stardom, calling him “the best storyteller there is.” The plan was, per Williams, “I would give him all the pieces, including all the music, and let him just tell the story in whatever way he saw fit—and not take over the process and jam in all these hubristic aspects of my career and achievement. But I wanted to do it in Legos, which would be difficult—but could be fun if we pulled it off.”
Legos were among Williams’s earliest toys and had been on his mind as a father. “If I’m going to tell my story, I want my kids to understand it,” Williams says of his aha moment, “and doing it through the guise of Legos would make that easy.”
Neville recalls Williams’s pitch to him as: “I want you to shoot a documentary, finish it, then take all the visuals, throw them away, and do it again in Lego.” His reaction? “I don’t know what the hell that means, but I’m really interested to find out.”
Williams took particular interest in character design to broaden the scope of the characteristics on offer. “We talked to Lego about pigmentation, hair texture, facial expressions, the combination of facial features that would denote a woman, denote a man, denote someone who’s genderless, denote someone who’s transgender,” he says. “We needed people to look at this film and feel the universality—that you all belong in this world too.”
Somewhat counterintuitively, the medium of Legos allowed deeper access and insight into Williams’s creative process, according to Neville. “Even if Pharrell had seen Lego as a way of putting a buffer between reality and his story, I felt like Lego actually allowed me to get into his head more than I could otherwise,” he notes. “Suddenly I could see some version of what he sees—looking at his influences and traveling into his mind’s eye, which is very hard to do in a normal documentary. But here, with the animation, we could.”
Williams likewise found his creativity sparked by the project, writing five new songs inspired by Neville’s version of his story. Viewing himself as a Minifigure helped him “see past my personal flaws and opinions and get to the universal purpose for my existence,” he observes. “That was what Morgan was able to brilliantly do, framing the work literally and figuratively, and what the Lego world helped me do. This film has changed me forever.”
And what began as a project about his singular life ultimately became a means for audiences to view their own paths afresh, Williams believes. “It ended up being a mirror for everyone else too,” he says. “People will leave this movie knowing that now is a better word than never. You can ask yourself, What are the really and truly important aspects of my life? And once you realize what they are, hone in on them and double down. If I can do that, you can too.”
Piece by Piece is in theaters on October 11.
