Akilah Hughes has dragged Jordan Peele’s longtime comedy partnership back into the spotlight, saying in a recent X post and a YouTube comedy set that she had been told why Key and Peele no longer worked together. Hughes wrote, “If you’ve ever wondered why K** and P*el* don’t work together anymore, well, watch the next video in this thread.”

In the set, Hughes said she had tried to launch her own sketch comedy show and was advised to team up with “the less successful half of a comedy duo that was prominent in the 2010s.” She said an agreement with “Lock” required him to mention the show during a “Saturday Night Live” appearance, but that he did not do so and instead thanked his wife in his closing remarks. Hughes then described Lock’s wife as “a weird main character in this whole story.”

She said she later landed a deal with a studio she called “Vermin,” then received a call from “Banana’s” wife. In Hughes’ retelling, the woman said, “I just had dinner with Lock and his wife, they say they’re doing a show with you... I’m just calling you because I wish someone would have warned me,” and later compared Lock’s wife to Phil Hartman’s wife. Hughes also said the woman told her she would not trust her to hold a baby and added, “There’s no accounting for how much money she’s cost that Black man.”

The remarks landed because they touched a split that has long been the subject of public curiosity: Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele were one of comedy’s most visible duos of the 2010s before going their separate ways. Hughes did not name them directly in the post, but her references to “Lock” and “Banana” were widely understood as Key and Peele.

Elle Pugliese, who is also known as Elle Key, has built her own career as a writer, producer and director. She became engaged to Keegan-Michael Key in 2017 and the two married in New York City after a seven-month engagement. Her producing credits include This American Journey in 2013, Boy Meets Girl in 2014 and Better Off Single in 2016, along with work on Brain Games and Game On! She and Key also created The History of Sketch Comedy podcast, which won the 2022 People’s Voice Award for Best Writing at the Webby Awards and became a 2023 book, The History of Sketch Comedy: A Journey Through the Art and Craft of Humor.

Elle Key has said the book idea had been with the couple for years. “The idea for a book came to us many years ago when we first became partners,” she said. “It was our love of comedy that helped bring us together,” and, of the finished work, “These pages reflect our joint passion for making others — and ourselves! — laugh.” She roots for the New York Giants, while Key supports the Detroit Lions.

That is where the tension sits: Hughes framed her account as inside information, but the version attached to Key and Elle was rejected. TMZ reported that multiple sources connected to the couple called the story “outlandish and fabricated.”

What remains is a very public claim about a private break-up, and a denial that leaves Hughes’ account unsupported. Unless someone involved decides to speak on the record, the story now turns on whether any of the backstage exchange she described can be verified at all.