Jonah Hill Meets the Parents in Netflix's 'You People' — Is It Based on a True Story?

Opposites attract, right? Well, sometimes. In Kenya Barris's new Netflix comedy You People, two 30-something singles fall in love after experiencing an Uber-driver mixup-turned-meet-cute. Ezra (Jonah Hill), a white Jewish man, and Amira (Lauren London), a Black Muslim woman, embark on a spontaneous romance before the former inevitably proposes.

Ezra goes from Views-era Drake to a man hopelessly in love within the span of six months. He's on top of the world, but one enormous challenge stands in front of him, and he's played by Emmy winner Eddie Murphy.

"Families and cultures clash when two LA millennials from different backgrounds fall in love and face the ultimate relationship test: meeting the parents," the Netflix synopsis reads.

Eddie Murphy and Nia Long play Amira's parents, who are uber-suspicious of Ezra's intentions; Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Emmy nominee David Duchovny play Ezra's parents, who lack self-awareness.

The story itself comes from Oscar nominee Jonah Hill and Emmy-nominated black-ish creator Kenya Barris. So, did they base their screenplay on a true story? Keep reading to find out!

No, You People is not based on a true story. It does, however, bring to mind the 1967 film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. In its review of the 2023 film, Variety called You People "a modern-day riff on Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner in which clashes of race and culture are even more pointed."

Put it this way, You People features a scene where the two sets of parents compare the Holocaust to slavery during dinner. Things get messy very quickly.

In Stanley Kramer's Oscar-winning 1967 film, an open-minded white woman named Joanna Drayton (Katharine Houghton) brings her fiancé, a distinguished Black doctor named John Prentice (Sidney Poitier), home to dinner to meet her fairly liberal parents. John's parents also attend the dinner, despite their stern disapproval of the relationship. Given that it's the '60s, the film examines racism and the clash of cultures during an era where civil rights issues were erupting.

Though the gender-swapped You People takes place more than 50 years later, it explores similar sociopolitical issues.

Jay Roach's 2000 comedy flick Meet the Parents may not be as groundbreaking as Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, but its light-hearted nature is present in You People.

Meet the Parents follows awkward groom-to-be Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) as he meets his girlfriend Pamela Byrnes's (Teri Polo) rigid parents for the first time. Virtually everything that could possibly go wrong does, which causes him to butt heads with his future father-in-law, intimidating ex-CIA agent Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro).

Sure, Meet the Parents is a bit outdated (it features a joke that pokes fun at Greg for being a nurse, for example), but its brand of goofiness weaves its way through You People's serious, sometimes cringe-inducing conversations.

A scene where Jonah Hill's character practically begs for someone to pass him the potatoes, hoping that it'll break some dinner table tension, boasts a Meet the Parents vibe. "Ever figure out what happened to the potatoes? An ETA on those?" he frantically asks amid the chaos.

And while You People has only earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of 39 percent, that's not to say that it doesn't have a distinct point of view.

Writer-director Kenya Barris spoke to Entertainment Tonight on behalf of Jonah Hill, relaying his intentions in terms of the film.

"He would say this is what we were trying to do — bring some unity through comedy and through actually talking about stuff that people are afraid to talk about," Kenya said. That's something we can get behind.

You People hits Netflix on Jan. 27, 2023.