Interview: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor on the Camera Being a Proxy For Her Grandson in ‘Nickel Boys’

“Don’t blame yourself, blame the dress!” That’s what Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor said when I told her I was sorry for almost stepping on her fabulous metallic outfit at the Gotham Awards earlier this month. There, she was celebrating her nominated film, Nickel Boys, a new American masterpiece that took home two awards at the ceremony that night, Best Director for RaMell Ross and Breakthrough Performer for Brandon Wilson. That warm sense of humor is a signature of Ellis-Taylor, popping up again when she read Wilson’s name on the winner’s card, “You are lying! It’s Brandon Wilson!” 

Based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Nickel Boys follows Elwood (Ethan Herisse), a young Black boy in Florida who, after a terrible stroke of bad luck, finds himself at a cruel reform school, Nickel Academy. Ellis-Taylor (who just earned a Critics Choice nomination for her performance) plays Hattie, Elwood’s loving grandmother, quietly fighting to bring him back home. It’s a gorgeous performance that communicates her love and pain, often in just a single look. In my review of the film out of the Telluride Film Festival, I praised Ellis-Taylor for her ability to “hold a Jonathan Demme-like closeup.” Imagine my surprise when she revealed to me that the camera was “not her friend,” and she couldn’t treat it like an antagonist anymore. 

In Ryan McQuade’s conversation with RaMell Ross for AwardsWatch, Ross spoke beautifully about one of the film’s most memorable scenes and a standout example of Ellis-Taylor’s power in the role. “Maybe the only touch Turner’s had has been violence. What if Turner, whoa, when’s the last time Turner had a hug? And how Hattie comes and she has all this love to give to Elwood, and she doesn’t read as a person who saves that up for someone, she gives it. And if she hugs Turner, what would that do for someone who had never, or who just hadn’t had physical touch, or love in that? Man, what a profound thing that small gesture could be.”

When I spoke with Ellis-Taylor last year for AwardsWatch about her work in Ava DuVernay’s Origin, she discussed the importance and difficulty of portraying grief and loss, something she had to access once again in Nickel Boys. Despite being set in different eras, both books and now, their brilliant cinematic adaptations unearth deep-seated American tragedies. Ellis-Taylor knows the importance and the weight of bringing these historic moments and connections to the cinema, and she’s ready for audiences to meet her there.

Sophia Ciminello: Nickel Boys is such a beautiful movie. It hasn’t even come out yet and I feel like it’s already lived a life. 

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor: Oh, that’s interesting. I think you’re right. I feel like it has lived a life. It was supposed to come out a couple of months ago and then the release changed too. I’m glad about that because it gives us more time to talk about it. I think because of how it was shot and the unique way that it was shot, it needs to be talked about and discussed in this expansive way. I feel like I’ve been doing this part of it more than I actually shot it. 

SC: Last year, when we spoke about your work in Origin, I remember as the interview was wrapping up, we teased Nickel Boys a little bit and you said that what RaMell [Ross] put together was brilliant. How did this role and project find its way to you?

AET: Well, I saw RaMell’s documentary, Hale County This Morning, This Evening and I was so shaken by it. I felt that I was in the presence of a filmmaker who made the life I live in the South feel familiar to me. Usually, when I see these depictions and portrayals of Black Southern life in particular, I feel like, “Who are these people?” What planet did they come from? What spaceship did they come in on? Because it doesn’t feel familiar to me. I don’t feel any kinship with it. But I felt that with what RaMell had done with Hale County. I wanted to tell him what I felt. I sought him out to tell him that very thing and I didn’t succeed in reaching him. But a couple of years later, this came out in the world, and there was a possibility that there was a role in it. I said I don’t care what it is; I just want to be in it. I want to be in whatever this man is doing because I knew it would be something singular.  

SC: I remember RaMell talking about that a bit back in Telluride, specifically about photographs of Black people in the South and how he was thinking a lot about authorship with this film. It was such an interesting way to frame the film and it went hand in hand with Hale County. 

AET: I think that’s what sets RaMell apart because someone could look at this and think, oh, that is just like an artistic project. Let me try this thing that you can see. But that’s not what his intention was. His intention was being a student of the production of Black images, seeing what is not there and wanting to bring that into existence or at least honor that. The way to do that is to confront the camera itself, to confront how we view, in this case, Black children—the lives of these two boys, Elwood and Turner, and how we view them. 

SC: I heard a great story from Jomo Fray about working with you that I have to share. In that scene when you go to Nickel and tell Elwood the disappointing news about the lawyer, there’s a moment when the camera tilts down as Elwood looks down. You looked at Jomo and said, “Look at me, Elwood.” 

AET: Yeah, I don’t like cameras (laughs). I don’t like them. I’ve never felt comfortable with them as an actor. I hear actors from classic films talk about how they use the camera. Someone like Barbara Stanwyck talks about how she uses the camera and how she uses the camera to tell the story that she wants to tell. I’ve never been that trusting of the camera. I’ve always felt that it was not my friend, that it was my enemy. That sort of antagonism didn’t work for this movie. I couldn’t do that. I had to befriend the camera because the camera was a proxy for my grandson. 

SC: Wow. Did that idea of the camera being a proxy also change your collaborative process with RaMell?

AET: Oh yeah, I had to lean into him quite a bit because I felt like I was flying blind. I didn’t know whether what I was doing was working or not. When you have a person there, I care less because what I want to do is feel like I’m having a lived-in experience with this person that I’m talking to. I can be like, you can think what you want to, you can come in and give me notes, but I’m living life over here. But I didn’t have that luxury in filming this, so I had to do a lot of, “What do you think?” “Tell me your thoughts.”

SC: In talking with people about the film, I think everyone fixates on a different image or something unique that the camera does. Is there an image from the film that stuck with you or something that you visualize when you think back on it?

AET: I haven’t seen the film, so I can’t speak to that, but I have seen maybe the first 45 seconds of it and seeing Elwood’s hand in concert with the birds or being on the ground. Just in concert with nature, I was drawn to that. 

SC: It really does play so beautifully with nature. I also wanted to ask you about the scene when you hug Turner. I haven’t seen a hug captured like that on film before. How did it feel to perform that scene with Brandon?

AET: Yeah, that was one of those scenes where I had to ask RaMell a lot, “Are you getting what you want to see here?” I really felt a bit frustrated because I felt like I wasn’t delivering. I didn’t feel it in my body. It took a long time to hear, “Yeah, this feels like life.” That was a bit of a tough day and was very isolating. I felt very alone, very by myself, for all kinds of reasons. I think that if it works, it’s because of how I was physically feeling tossed at sea. 

SC: I think that’s probably how your character feels in that moment too, in feeling really alone. When I saw the film at the New York Film Festival, you spoke about how people have told you that this movie is a “hard watch.” Why do you think people need these stories to be hopeful or universal?

AET: I think we have become…(pauses)…listen, I’m the first one when I’m going through a bad day to watch a Christmas movie. Here I am. That would be me! (laughs)

SC: (Laughs) There are some good ones on right now. 

AET: Yeah, when I’m stressed out, I think, oh, I need a Christmas movie because I know how it’s going to turn out. You know? Lighting the Christmas tree…

SC: Right, lighting the tree, someone’s going to fall in love.

AET: (Laughs) Exactly, someone’s going to fall in love. Listen, I acknowledge this. I am a participant in this. However, I think that particularly American filmmaking and American cinema seeks to do all the work for us when we come into a cinematic space. We want to provide the popcorn and the hope. We want it to be a full service. I think it’s made us too passive and has made us passive viewers. What RaMell has done is that he is upending that practice. He’s upending what has become a tradition in American cinema. I have heard of that but I feel like how do we want to feel? What is our expectation to feel? When we come to a story that is about the brutality and the barbarism that these children experience, Black and white, should we expect to feel good after that? No, we shouldn’t. We should feel challenged. We should feel uncomfortable. We should feel a little fury. The fury should be, wow, that happened here? That didn’t happen in Europe. It happened here. It happened on our soil. In many ways, a lot of folks were complicit and silent in what happened. I think we should feel that way. I want to be like, “It’s okay. It’s alright to feel that way,” to walk out feeling uncomfortable because that is a true witness. That is when we have truly witnessed what these children went through, if we do feel shaken by it. 

SC: Right, if you’re in an active role instead of a passive one, you have to interrogate that complicity and think about that more deeply. 

AET: Yes, exactly. Then we can be the hope for these children because we’re talking about it. We feel something. That feeling can translate into discussions and research and finding out and saying, okay, this continued to happen for years and years because people were quiet. I’m going to break my silence. 

SC: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me again, Aunjanue. Congratulations on everything with Nickel Boys. 

AET: Thank you. This was another great conversation, and I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Nickel Boys is now playing in New York, will open in Los Angeles on December 20 and expand nationwide in the following weeks.