Pharrell Williams can't stand the thought of looking at his face or hearing his voice in the theater. The award-winning singer even balks at hearing himself on a voicemail. This posed a problem when the idea of ​​making a biopic came up.

“I just didn’t find my story particularly interesting,” Williams says. People say, 'Oh, you're an entertainer.' You hear your voice all the time.' But I've always had this feeling about my voice. I just do what I do for other people.

“Trust me, I’ll see the video once. I don't watch my own videos. I don't read my interviews. I don't because it is for me. And most entertainers have plenty of vanities where they can do that. But my objectivity is different because I'm a producer. So I have a very high standard of what performance should be and how good I think people should be and what they should do, and so it can be debilitating for me.”

Williams was reluctant to do a biopic, but his agent continued to push the matter. It wasn't until the agent told Williams he could still make the film whatever he wanted that the door opened for the unique approach.

Despite his concerns, there had to be a way to show the life of the cultural icon that he would accept. The solution consisted of tiny plastic building blocks.

“Piece By Piece,” which hits theaters October 11, presents a journey through the life of Williams, told through the lens of LEGO animation. The film features interviews with Jay-Z, Missy Elliott, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar.

Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville took the animation approach to show Williams' journey from restless Virginia Beach youth to complex artist and producer.

“I wanted my children to understand my story. We always buy them LEGO sets, from our triplets to our oldest. I played with that as a kid,” Williams says. “My earliest memory of toys is my parents buying me LEGO sets.”

The first thing he had to do was convince Neville that the concept would work. Then he had to get permission from the LEGO company to use their product. The final step was to get executives at Focus Features and Universal Studios to agree to the approach.

When everyone agreed, Williams realized for a moment that what they were doing should have been impossible, but his efforts made the impossible possible.

Neville understood why Williams wanted such a different approach. The director disagrees with the idea that the concept gives Williams a way to hide.

“I actually feel like LEGO has brought us closer together in a strange way because it's not just what you see with your eye, but also what you see with your mind's eye. And so suddenly we can be in his head,” says Neville. “We can see the colors that he sees, we can see the beats, we can do all these things that you normally can't do in a documentary.

“That opened the door to all the things we could do to actually delve more into creativity in a way, but also into that kind of storytelling in a more intimate way. “

By using the colorful stones, Neville was able to explore how Williams sees music as a portal to another dimension, filled with wondrous swirls of sound and color that immerse him in another version of the world.

Williams is a recording artist, producer, songwriter, philanthropist, entrepreneur and creative director for Louis Vuitton menswear with a total of 10 billion global music streams to date. He has won 13 Grammy Awards and received two Academy Award nominations for his original song “Happy” (“Despicable Me 2”) and as a producer for the Best Picture-nominated film “Hidden Figures.”

In 2018, Williams narrated Universal's remake of the classic film The Grinch, authored the book A Fish Doesn't Know It's Wet, and released the Netflix original series Brainchild. Other projects include “Dope,” “Roxanne Roxanne,” “Voices of Fire” and “Harlem.”

The biopic is the latest example of how hard Williams is trying. This drive comes naturally to him.

“I think people are born with a lot of things. Sometimes people are born with creativity. I think everyone is born with creativity, but some people are born with a strong connection to it,” says Williams. “Then there are people who are born with drive and everyone is accessible, but sometimes that is not the case.

“And then there are people who are born with both. I didn't know I had such drive. In fact, for years I thought I was lazy. And it took me years to realize that it wasn’t that I was lazy, it was that I just wasn’t inspired.”

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

For the latest news, weather, sports and streaming videos, visit KGET 17.