‘Nickel Boys’ Star Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor on Experiencing the Most Prolific Year of Her Career and Why She Likes Playing ‘Inconvenient Women’
As an actor, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor has never regarded the camera as her ally.
“I’ve always felt like it was an enemy, because it feels intrusive,” says Ellis-Taylor, folding her legs under her on the couch in a West Hollywood hotel as she discusses her latest role in “Nickel Boys.”
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Movie sets are like construction sites, where filmmakers build a world out of nothing. There, in the middle of all that hammering and people rigging lights, “actors are asked to transform and have a human experience with a big-ass piece of machinery that is a foot away from you,” she says. “And then you’re not supposed to look at it.”
“Nickel Boys” — in which she plays Hattie, the dutiful grandmother of a teenage boy wrongfully sentenced to attend a brutal reform school — presented a unique challenge. Director RaMell Ross shot the harrowing drama in a distinct visual style, with Ellis-Taylor staring down the lens of the camera instead of into the eyes of a human scene partner. “Then I get this job, and I have to make it my friend. I have to have an intimate relationship with it and embrace it.”
The experimental setup was difficult to get used to, even for an Oscar- and Emmy-nominated actor. Ultimately, Ellis-Taylor found the feelings of isolation and loneliness it sparked to be useful — they reflected Hattie’s reality as she fought for justice for her grandson. “Nickel Boys” is based the 2020 Pulitzer Prize winning novel from Colson Whitehead, which fictionalizes events at the real Dozier School for Boys, where more than 100 students died from abuse.
The Amazon MGM film has been gaining steam along the awards season circuit, with a Golden Globe nomination for best motion picture – drama, as well as wins at the Gotham Awards, inclusion on AFI’s top 10 film list and other kudos from various critics organizations. Ellis-Taylor will be recognized with the Social Impact Award at the Critics Choice Association Celebration of Black Cinema and Television.
“Nickel Boys,” which opens in limited release on Friday, caps off a banner year for Ellis-Taylor, who has starring or major supporting roles in four films — the others are Lee Daniels’ “The Deliverance,” Titus Kaphar’s “Exhibiting Forgiveness” and Tina Mabry’s “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can Eat.” (Technically, it’s five, if you include Ava DuVernay’s “Origin,” which debuted in December 2023 and expanded in January.) It’s a showcase for her prodigious, multifaceted talent: Ellis-Taylor plays a reverend recruited to conduct an exorcism; a faithful mother urging her adult son to reconcile with his recovering-addict father; and the feisty one in a trio of lifelong friends.
“I don’t want to be myself on-screen. I do me all the time, you know. I want to play women who I am stunned and marveled by,” Ellis-Taylor says of what attracted her to these parts, which explore different aspects of Black womanhood. If there’s a thread among them, it’s that they’re all “inconvenient women.” She explains: “This might be a little simplistic, but I think all of these women are particularly inconvenient for the political or the cultural structures in their lives.”
It’s been a remarkable run, yet Ellis-Taylor is not entirely convinced the bounty of meaty roles is going to last. “I don’t take it for granted that it will, you know what I mean?” she says. “I don’t know what is on the horizon at all.”
Ellis-Taylor earned her first Academy Award nomination in 2021 for “King Richard,” but says the industry didn’t respond with offers for more interesting parts.
“Speaking truthfully, no,” Ellis-Taylor says plainly. “I don’t mean this in any disparaging way, but I look at the roles Nicole Kidman gets to play, and Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet, Julianne Moore — these are my contemporaries. The diversity of the roles they get to play, the volume, I will never experience that. And that’s incredibly frustrating.”
In fact, when Ellis-Taylor sits down with Variety in mid-November, she’s trying to decide whether to sign on for a new project. It’s a great offer, but she’s not sure if she’s taking the role because she’s passionate about the material or worried the big opportunity won’t come again.
“I’m saying things to myself [like], ‘Who am I to pass on something?’ and ‘Girl, you better take that job!’ That’s the voice that I’m hearing,” she admits, explaining she’s worried that making a decision out of fear will affect the work she’s going to do. But the reality is that there might not be 20 more jobs down the line for her to sort through.
Ellis-Taylor has observed and experienced a “lack of curiosity about the lives of Black women that extends into every facet of our lives — politically, within the arts and entertainment, whatever.” For example, after a recent screening of “Origin” at her alma mater, Brown University, a man shared that her portrayal of Isabel Wilkerson, author of the book on which the film is based, marked the first time he’d seen a Black woman scholar on-screen.
“Black women are boundless, but the aperture is so small in how we are seen,” Ellis-Taylor says, sounding more determined than disheartened. “It’s exciting for me to do that kind of work.”
Read on as Ellis-Taylor reflects on her standout year.
I read that you approached RaMell Ross — did you already have “Nickel Boys” in mind when you reached out?
I didn’t know he was going to do “Nickel Boys.” I saw “Hale County, This Morning, This Evening” and I was stunned. And my feeling of being stunned was matched by my feeling of familiarity. I had not experienced that in any narrative or documentary work that was about Black life in the South. No matter what medium it is, I’ve always felt that I was watching the work of an observer. I was watching the work of a foreigner who parachuted in, took a couple pictures and left. [With] this, I saw kindred. I was like, “Who is my kinfolk? I need to know this person, and I need them to know what they did to me when I when I experienced their filmmaking.
So, that’s why I called the general office number at Brown [where Ross is an associate professor in the visual art department] and asked to speak to him — with no success. Then I found his email that he never checks, but I just had to tell him how I felt. I felt witnessed in a way that I had not before. You can witness something from afar, but I felt someone was amen-ing my existence, meaning, “I get it. I get you. I’m here with you.” That’s what I felt from him. And then, a couple years later, I hear rumors of [“Nickel Boys”] happening and they came to me.
Ross used a similar form of POV in “Hale County,” but doing it in a narrative film is bold and experimental — especially as his narrative feature debut. What was it like being a part of and contributing to that process?
I didn’t know how bold until I got to work the first day. I had no clue. When I read the script, I just thought that there was just something that they forgot to put in because, you know, he’s a first-time filmmaker. [I thought,] “I’ll talk to him.” I got there and it was like, “No, it’s written that way because that’s what we intended.” There is no coverage. It’s just you. I was like, “Whoa.”
What was that process of learning to embrace it?
It was not easy. But nothing is. I can do a scene with a person and there’s no connection there and you have to fight for connection. Ultimately, it was very isolating. It’s very lonely; but, at a certain point, I realized this is how she feels. Hattie is lonely; she’s by herself, so it helped.
This summer, “The Deliverance” hit No. 1 on Netflix and got everybody…
Mad. Say it. Everybody was pissed off [laughs].
But it was still so enjoyable — though I was skeptical about watching because, after growing up in the Black church, I don’t really engage with things about possession. But this felt like a chance to engage with something based on a true story that also was specific to Black life, especially as it relates to demons. What was your experience of “The Deliverance”?
I had a good time playing Apostle Bernice! There was more than one preacher who told their congregation, “Don’t watch that film,” and someone even said, “It is demonic,” so that’s what we were dealing with. I was here for all the drama about it. I thought it was so funny and amusing and good, because how Black folks deal with demons is different than how white people deal with demons. And that’s why I wanted to do it.
Lee had me work with this man, Apostle Louis Dickens. He is a Black apostle, and he does this kind of work, especially in West Africa, he does most of his work in Ghana. It wasn’t my spiritual tradition, not my religious history at all, but it is a kind of ministry and it is Blackety, Black, Black, Black. That’s what was exciting to me — that these Black folks would save themselves, not some dude in a frock coming in and doing the work for us.
With “Exhibiting Forgiveness,” you worked with celebrated artist Titus Kaphar in his feature directorial debut. He told me that because he was less experienced with directing than you and the rest of the cast are as actors, much of your conversations were about finding personal connections to the characters versus him giving you direction. What was it like working with him on a story that sprung from his own life experiences?
Playing this man’s mama in front of him — lord, today! I’ve played the mother of famous people, but they weren’t around. Then add to that that he’s directing you. What that boiled down to for me was I really wanted to do the best I could by him.
He had expansive conversations — and not one-sided ones, like “Let me tell you about my life.” It was more like “Let’s talk about our shared experience.” So when we got on set it was a very rich, deep well to pull from because of those conversation I talked about my alienation from, my Black church experience being a queer woman and being a woman. And he talked about his and what that was like. He talked about why he needed to do this story at this moment in his life that is so personal. It’s not a memoir and it is.
I was talking to a woman who’s writing a memoir now, and she said someone told her, “You essentially have to become the person you were again. You’re looking at yourself and judging what you were, but in order to do that, you have to become that person again.” [“Exhibiting Forgiveness”] was memoir filmmaking in that way: the things that he’s trying to run from, he had to go back to. It’s a complicated thing he was doing that we were a part of.
What stands out about “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can Eat”?
I loved getting to work with Sanaa Lathan. I really wanted to work with her. I didn’t have designs on it, because we’ve not crossed paths in that way, but I think she dope. So I was so excited!
I don’t get to work with women very much. I’m always in these in stories that revolve around men. That’s why I loved doing “The Deliverance” and “The Supremes,” particularly because it was a culture and a community of women that they focused around. All of that showed and felt what was possible for Black women getting to be friends on camera and not be enemies, and not throwing drinks at each other. None of that stuff. It is a celebration of Black women friendship.
You’re receiving the Social Impact Award from Critics Choice — which speaks to the idea that the films you do speaks to Black people’s humanity and makes an impact on how we are seen. How do you see your on-camera work as an extension of the work you do as an activist?
I’ve had hard conversations about “Nickel Boys.” People have said, “Where’s the hope in it?” or “It’s hard to watch.” We are giving witness and an account of something — a brutalization against American children that happened in a school by adults who were essentially charged to be providers and caregivers for these children. And it wasn’t just the school and the people who were the teachers; it was a community of folks who profited from this brutality. It should be hard to watch.
And as far as the hope is concerned, I think we have arrived at a level of complacency as consumers of cinema that we can luxuriate in watching films that are about something about hell and expect to come out of it feeling better about ourselves. That is a privilege that we should not allow ourselves to have. That’s not RaMell’s job — to give you hope — because that’s dishonest. And I think RaMell is one of those filmmakers who’s interested and buoyed and excited about truth. We live in a culture that says lying is okay, right? So, what’s dangerous is the truth. What’s exciting is the truth. And that’s what I think RaMell is driven by.
I don’t think that people necessarily want hope. What they want is absolution. “I don’t have to be responsible for what happened to those children.” People should not see something like “Nickel Boys” and feel that way — because how he shoots it, he doesn’t allow you to, and I think that’s very, very hard for people.
The hope is us. Because now we know what happened to those children, and we can say, “I want to know more.” What happened to those families? Are they getting justice? Where else is that happening around the country? Because it didn’t just happen at the Dozier school. it still happening? I don’t want any child I know to ever go through that, How does that exhibit itself or present itself in other facets of our society, where children are treated in such a way and people get away with it? We are the hope.
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