Interview: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor on Collaborating with Ava DuVernay, Meeting the Moment, and Playing a Journalistic Indiana Jones
Early in Ava DuVernay’s remarkable new film Origin, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Isabel Wilkerson (a transcendent Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) listens to a recording of the 911 call placed the night that Trayvon Martin was murdered. We’re listening to the horror that unfolds via audio that DuVernay smartly juxtaposes to an earlier scene in the film, but we’re watching Ellis-Taylor. She doesn’t have a dramatic monologue or a conversation with another character in the room. She’s alone, feeling everything in real-time, forcing the audience to feel it too and to understand an unbelievably dark moment in American history.
That ability to conjure a specific feeling within the audience is a staple of Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s work. Her role in Origin was hard-won after a thirty-year career where she has created characters that allow her audiences to feel deeply, no matter how small the role. Recently, Ellis-Taylor has earned exciting accolades for her work, including an Emmy nomination in 2019 for her performance as Sharonne Salaam in When They See Us (with Origin collaborator Niecy Nash-Betts) and another in 2021 for her role as Hippolyta Freeman in Lovecraft Country. She also received her first Academy Award nomination for her scene-stealing turn as Brandy, the matriarch of the Williams family in King Richard (with Origin collaborator Jon Bernthal).
Origin and the role of Isabel Wilkerson entered Ellis-Taylor’s life at the perfect time. An original story inspired by Wilkerson’s nonfiction triumph “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” Origin tells the story of the book’s author, Isabel Wilkerson, and her commitment to uncovering the mysteries of her proposed hypothesis–you can connect the experiences of people of color in the United States to Nazi Germany to the caste system in India. It’s a bold, ambitious web of connections, tracing global historical moments that span centuries, while still uncovering an intimate, personal story of a woman at the center of it all. The film’s ideas are significant and broad in scope, yet Ellis-Taylor’s portrayal of Wilkerson makes the film feel grounded and personal. In the best performance of her career, Ellis-Taylor beautifully navigates between and within the spaces of loss and discovery. It’s the type of role that you could only tackle if you had the same sense of wonder and loss that Wilkerson shared, and Ellis-Taylor was able to intertwine her own personal connections with the grief and loss that her character experiences in the film.
As I sat down with Ellis-Taylor over Zoom, a train went by my window in the background. She warmly asked what part of the city I lived in, and we laughed about how we both tend to say “Good Morning” no matter what time of day it is. She’s funny and incredibly down to earth, speaking about her work in a way that reminds you of just how important a particular project can be for an actor, especially one like Origin. A few times, she noted that she felt the weight and responsibility of the project and that she just “wanted to meet the moment.” Ellis-Taylor didn’t just meet the moment; she embodied it.
Sophia Ciminello: Thank you so much for speaking with me about your work in Origin. I was pretty blown away by this movie.
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor: Thank you so much. I appreciate that.
SC: Of course. Origin is such an ambitious, bold movie, and I love how Ava [DuVernay] chose to tell the story. When did you realize that you had to play Isabel Wilkerson?
AET: Well, I think that those words that you used were what excited me so much about what she wanted to do, you know? I had heard that she had gotten the rights to the book, but I hadn’t heard anything beyond or outside of that. But then, last fall, I heard rumors of casting, and my agent asked me if I had read the book. I had not read it at that point, but I had read other work by Miss Wilkerson. So, I said, “I want to be a part of this conversation.” I think she might have been seeing people, but I said, “Listen. I want to do whatever I can to at least try.” I wanted to try. (Laughs). So, I looked at a picture of Miss Wilkerson, and I said, “I think I can make myself look like her. Okay. Mm-hmm.” (Laughs)
SC: (Laughs) Oh, that’s great.
AET: Yeah, so my sister and I did all the things, and we sent a picture in to the casting agent. The casting agent sent it to Ava, and she called me, and I drove down to meet her in Savannah. We talked for hours. I asked her during the conversation, “Do you want me to tape?” and she said, “No, you don’t have to, but it’s up to you.” And then, I thought the conversation had gone so well that I didn’t want to jinx it by reading for her. Do you know what I mean?
SC: Of course! You don’t want to jinx it when you have a good feeling.
AET: Right! So, I woke up that morning like, goddamnit, what did I do? I should have read for her last night! What have I done? I’m calling my friends. I’m calling everybody and asking, “Do you think I should call her?” It was like 6 o’clock in the morning! (Laughs). I said, you know what, I’ll just go back to where I was–I was filming in Wilmington–and I’ll just tape and send it to her. So, it just started this rash of tapings that I was doing, taping, taping, taping, and I was never satisfied with anything that I did ever. Anyway, she saved me from that and just called and told me I had the part.
But I’m telling you, she didn’t know I was doing all of that. On my phone, I have at least ten videos, and I was looking at it like that doesn’t work, that doesn’t work, that doesn’t work. At the end of the week, though, she just put me out of my misery. (Laughs).
SC: (Laughs) I really do feel like when we want something really badly, that’s when we start second-guessing ourselves—
AET: Yes!
SC: We start doing all of those little extra things that maybe they don’t actually end up needing from us. It’s just that little bit of reassurance for yourself.
AET: Yeah, I wanted it bad, girl! You know what I mean? I wanted it bad. I believed in the writing. I believed in the messaging. I believed in the scholarship of Miss Wilkerson. And I think that this idea of having this possibility of a new language that we use to describe who we are as a nation, who we are as a world, an old language, but new for us, excites me. I wanted it on every tongue. I wanted to be a part of that.
SC: Yeah, I think that’s the perfect way to describe it too. And when you read her words, that’s exactly how it feels. When I read “The Warmth of Other Suns” for the first time, I thought, “Oh, this is a completely different way to tell a historical story.” Were you able to use her books or “Caste” specifically as a guide to understand more about who she was through the scope and ambition of her writing?
AET: Yeah, you know, for my own personal reasons, I saw the book as a memoir. As much as it’s a work of history and historical journalism, the great thing is that because her writing is so intimate and so personal, she’s talking about something that happened to her in every chapter. And I love that. I love it when there’s blood in the work, and I love that it’s not impersonal. I’m telling you about this, and I’m making this argument because this is something that I’m living. And that’s what her work is, so I was able to pull from that a great deal.
SC: And I like how you said that and how part of the brilliance in the film, too, is that Ava does the same thing really—she weaves together Wilkerson’s personal experiences with the book and illustrates how impossible it is to untangle your experiences from your art. I’m wondering if you feel that was as an actor, too. Did you feel that the details of your own life maybe converged with the world of the film when you were finding the character?
AET: Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, and I think this is what makes Miss Wilkerson singular. There are other writers who do what she does, and it’s very academic, you know? It’s very scholarly. It’s done in a kind of opaque language that normal people like me can’t understand (laughs).
SC: (Laughs) I know the feeling.
AET: (Laughs) Right? Exactly. She doesn’t do that because she understands that what she is doing is, I feel, and I believe, no less than trying to make this world different. That’s a very basic thing to say, but she makes us think about violence and about how we care for each other and care about each other. She gives us the incentive to do that, so she knows there’s an urgency to her writing. It has to be accessible.
And I think for me, she was speaking to me. She speaks to everybody, but I think particularly in how she builds her argument for “Caste.” It’s not abstract for me. I go, “Okay, I went through that. I went through that. I’m from the rural South. I’m from Mississippi.” So, you know, where some of these ideas can be very abstract to people from other parts of the country, they’re not for me; they’re my life.
SC: And I’m sure that made the role even more meaningful for you, too, to be able to access that part of your life.
AET: Yes, yes! And it made me want to be a part of it. It made me not want to fail the moment. All of that fit into what got me up to go to work every day.
SC: And you express grief in a way that’s very real and true to life. There was a moment that I’m still thinking about when your character says, “If you were able to explain caste to my cousin, my mother…” and then you pause. It’s like that moment when, for a split second, you forget that someone you love is gone. How did you access that portrayal of grief—one that feels grounded and not performed or acted?
AET: What a great question. It’s what I struggled with and what I continue to struggle with. I carry grief with me every day. I live with it. I lost my mother, who was my best friend. You know, I had a conversation with myself in the shower the other day because I feel like it’s demanded of me to explain why I still feel the way that I feel, you know?
SC: Absolutely.
AET: So, I said to myself, “Imagine going through the rest of your life without your best friend.” You know, you have friends. I have friends of mine. These are my best friends. These are my homies. Hopefully, they’re going to die in twenty years or so, but we’re going to live our lives together. But my other best friend, I won’t have that. And I thought, okay, alright. What’s unfortunate is that I think in American culture, because we have such a terrible way of handling death and people who are aging, we cannibalize ourselves with, it has to be new, it has to be new, it has to be young! So, there is no space made for grief. I think it’s interesting that I’m hearing many more people talking about that and making space for that, unfortunately, essential part of life.
SC: Thank you so much for sharing that. I think so many of your best scenes in the movie are these wordless moments. We’ve all felt that when we have to go back into the world after a moment of grief, like when you’re gearing up to go inside to that event. Ava frames you in these Jonathan Demme-like close-ups, and we just feel everything. How do you express these emotions so delicately without dialogue? Where do you find those things within yourself?
AET: One of the things that Ava spoke to me about when she was talking to me about the film initially is that she wanted to film something or portray something that explored the interior life of a woman, and specifically, the thinking life of a woman. We just don’t have that in film, period, particularly about women. You know, we are all there to be appendages of men. We are there to be supportive in those scenes where they are trying to decide whether they will save the world. That is kind of our lot in life. So that was exciting to me, and it felt like an invitation to lean on the unspoken. I’m so so excited by that, and I want to do more of that.
SC: I love that you had that conversation with Ava because it’s just so true. We rarely see that in film. The men have these bold, showy moments, and the women are relegated to the background. You really feel that difference here from you and Ava.
AET: You know, you see it a lot in Terrence Malick’s filmmaking. There’s this great, wonderful young filmmaker, Raven Jackson, too.
SC: Oh yes! I loved All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt. It was such a beautiful movie.
AET: Yes,yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! She just leans into the unspoken and the unsaid. I just love that kind of film. I love that kind of filmmaking.
SC: Me too. I also think one of the best parts of the movie is that you’re really good at getting us invested in this story, almost as an adventure for your character, like an academic scavenger hunt in a way. What was it like traveling to these different locations like Germany and India that she went to as a part of her research process?
AET: Well, the great thing about it for me was that I had never been to either of those places before. So, yeah, Ava was really able to capture my wonder in real-time. I had never been to Germany. I had never been to New Delhi or India at all. So everything you’re seeing, if I look like, “Oh my God!” it’s because I was like, “Oh my God!” I was truly scared to death but also coming out of my skin with joy at the experience.
SC: I think you can really feel that wonder in the movie. And there are these moments where we see her making these small but profound discoveries that connect to her thesis. One of my favorites is when she says, “Dr. King wrote about India in Ebony magazine?” It’s just this lightbulb moment for her that all of these connections that she has hypothesized are true. Did you find yourself making little discoveries like that throughout filming about yourself, your character, or the rest of the world?
AET: Yeah, well, you know, I want to go back to what you said about how she’s on this journalistic scavenger hunt. And what I’ve sort of said to a few people, I see her as this literary journalistic Indiana Jones, you know?
SC: That’s such a fun comparison.
AET: Yeah, you know, going around the world and being chased by these ghosts and grief, and yet she has to get that. So, I love that, and I would say that, yeah, there was so much discovery in this process because I was reading and researching while I was filming. I had to do that so I would not sound like I was pretending to be a scholar. Part of that is that you have to know what you’re talking about, but that research was constantly leading me to other places, and I was doing a lot of cross-referencing by reading other things. While I was doing the film, I was reading “Ordinary Notes” by Christina Sharp and a lot of poetry by some Black women poets. I read “The 1619 Project” just so I would read the ideas and her argument, but also make sure that I had enough texture in it to be believable.
So yeah, I was constantly discovering things. Even though when I said them in the film, it was the knowledge that I had because I had to know it in order to say it, I was still stunned. I mean, the idea that the Nazis studied our endogamy practices here in this country and ultimately decided that, no, we could never get away with that. It’s stunning.
SC: It really is. Even if you’ve read the book or if you’ve heard those pieces of information and done the research, it’s still shocking to hear that again and to put it together.
AET: Yes, yes, and I went through a period a couple of weeks ago where I was feeling…I think every actor probably goes through this, but I go through it a little bit, but just feeling like I said, that I didn’t meet the moment, you know? But I had to come out of that, and I think where I am right now is that this information that we’re talking about, this country needs to know that. We need to know that about ourselves. So, I’m trying to remove me and my ego from that and work in service of that, that knowledge that we need to know in order to be.
SC: That’s such a beautiful takeaway. This feels like such a perfect role for you at the perfect time in your career.
AET: Thank you. Thank you for being so detailed, how you saw and received it, and your questions. It doesn’t happen all the time. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
SC: Of course. Well, it was so nice to talk to you today, Aunjanue, and I wish you the best of luck with the movie’s release and everything you have coming your way. I know you have another adaptation of a great book coming with The Nickel Boys.
AET: Yes! I actually have two coming. I have The Nickel Boys, which is based on Colson Whitehead’s book. That was adapted by Ramell Ross, who is extraordinary. He’s just a brilliant, brilliant man. And then I’m in The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat with Sanaa Lathan and Uzo Aduba. I’m in the book world these days. I love it. I love books.
SC: The book world is a good place to be. Thank you again, Aunjanue!
AET: Thank you! (Waves) Bye, Brooklyn!
Origin begins a limited release run in select theaters from NEON on January 19.
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