Exclusive: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor & director RaMell Ross talk Nickel Boy
Currently in select theaters is Nickel Boys, directed by RaMell Ross, his second film after making Hale County This Morning This Evening previously. Nickel Boys stars Ethan Herisse as Elwood, Brandon Wilson as Turner, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, & Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.
Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel from Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys chronicles the powerful friendship between two African American men navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida.
Elwood Curtis's college dream shatters alongside a two-lane Florida highway. Bearing the brunt of an innocent misstep, he’s sentenced to the netherworld of Nickel Academy, a brutal reformatory sunk deep in the Jim Crow South. He encounters another ward, the seen-it-all Turner. The two Black teens strike up an alliance: Turner dispensing fundamental tips for survival, Elwood, clinging to his optimistic worldview. Backdropped by the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, their existence appear worlds away from Rev. Martin Luther King's burnished oratory. Despite Nickel's brutality, Elwood strives to hold onto humanity, awakening a new vision for Turner.
Herisse was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for his portrayal of Yusef Salaam in the Emmy-nominated When They See Us. Additional credits include Chicago Med, Big Time Rush, About a Boy, The Mindy Project and Key and Peele.
Wilson’s past credits include Gavin O’Connor’s critically acclaimed Ben Affleck basketball pic The Way Back and the Seattle Film Festival winner Murmur from director Mark Polish.
Ellis is coming off doing Warner Bros.’ new feature adaptation of The Color Purple, The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, The Deliverance, Justified: City Primeval and the second season of AMC’s 61st Street. She was Oscar-nominated for her role as Serena and Venus Williams’ mother Oracene Price in Warner Bros.’ King Richard who has also notched Emmy noms for her work on Netflix’s When They See Us and HBO’s Lovecraft Country. Additional credits include The Clark Sisters: First Ladies of Gospel, which earned her a NAACP Award nomination for Actress in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special, as well as If Beale Street Could Talk, The Birth of a Nation and the miniseries The Book of Negroes.
Ross is best known for his first feature — the 2018 documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, which was nominated for an Oscar, as well as an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmaking, also receiving a Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and a 2020 Peabody Award. His interdisciplinary work has appeared across the world including Aperture; Hammer Museum; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Museum of Modern Art; Georgia Museum of Art; National Gallery of Art; Walker Art Center; and Jules Collins Smith Museum. He was awarded an Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship and was a 2020 USA Artist Fellow, as well as a 2022 Solomon Fellow at Harvard University, and serves as an associate professor in Brown University’s Visual Art Department.
Produced by Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, David Levine, and Joslyn Barnes, this first premiered at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival.
Blackfilmandtv.com's Wilson Morales talks to cast members with Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor & director RaMell Ross on Nickel Boys.