SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — As Awards season continues to showcase the best of 2024, “Nickel Boys” is one in contention for multiple nominations including best cinematography, best picture, and best-adapted screenplay.
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, “Nickel Boys” centers around the true events of the Dozier Academy, which was found to have abused and murdered students in their care. ABC4 celebrity interviewer Patrick Beatty sat down with director RaMell Ross, and stars Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor to discuss the new Oscar contender.
RaMell Ross
Q: What were your initial thoughts going into this and what made you decide that this was going to be your next project to take on?
RaMell: “My initial thoughts were of genuine psychological suspension. You think about the Dozier school boys and your thought kind of stops there. You’re just like, ‘What? They said they ran away?’ and the system that allows for that to take place. After that, I think generally speaking, use that confusion as fuel to build something that felt real and that could have the same stakes as being in the real world.”
Q: You do something so unique with this film. We’ve seen it done in some action films like ‘Hardcore Henry’ and stuff with the POV perspective, but I feel it has never felt more personal than in Nickel Boys. Talk about what it was like formulating that language and the challenges for doing different characters with that POV.
RaMell: “The idea was so early that it allowed for a lot of conceptualization. I think it emerges, and I also feel like I’ve, I already did it with the first film I made, ‘Hale County This Morning, This Evening’, in which it’s not literally the same, but conceptually and theoretically and almost practically, it functions in the same way. That was a good onramp to it. Aside from that, a lot of it was developed with Jomo Frey, the DP [director of photography.]
We spent many a week in his Airbnb with my dSLR, working out some of the specific movements and the relationship between vision and time and what we needed to accomplish the scenes in. What you see is a product of that.”
Q: Turner and Elwood are both sides of the same coin as far as their perspective of, how you’re seeing the school and, and the feelings that they have there. Did you find yourself becoming them as you were filming in those different perspectives where if you’re working on an Elwood scene, you’re feeling more like Elwood, Turner, you’re feeling more despondent, maybe disassociated to everything?
RaMell: “That’s a good question because I initially thought when you started or you’re halfway through that I already am them because I am, you know? The vision of where they were looking was coming from my childhood and my imagination. But I don’t think I necessarily saw myself or took on any of their visual ways of seeing. I think that the way the film was built, that was allowed to just be underpinned by the scenes that they were in, and it was kind of the sort of, for lack of a better word, the teleology of their movements.”
Q: How do you see audiences reacting to this, and how do you give a challenging story while making sure that the audience is still engaged?
RaMell: “These are the biggest challenges. I think trying to one, resurrect history in a way that’s not overly explanatory or didactic or feels like actual pedagogy, and then also trying to do what cinema does best, which is give someone an experience and to have someone be deeply engaged for reasons that are beyond their sort of conscious brain.
I don’t know how to do it, aside from the ways in which I have in the past, but I feel very privileged to have access to Colson’s narrative, which are the bones of the film … It’s an honor to have the Dozier school boys’ legacies and to be able to elevate them. I mean, I don’t know many others who were given that permission.”
“Nickel Boys” is available in a limited theatrical release and can be seen in Utah this weekend. For more interviews and reviews head to the “Shows” tab and pick “See It or Skip It” on ABC4.com
Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson
Q: Knowing what you have to do on the technical side is one thing, but the emotions that you bring out in those moments are incredible. What was it like having to stare directly at a camera and have that be your scene partner?
Ethan: “Yeah. It was unnatural. It’s one of the things that you are first told when you start acting is, don’t look at the camera and you act as though it doesn’t exist. It’s this intrusive force in the scene usually, but in this case, it is your scene partner. It just took some unlearning and then relearning how to be honest and how to play and see the other person rather than a lens in front of you.”
Q: Were you guys ever behind the camera at all? Were you in the room trying to give each other something to go off of while filming? Or was it just after the fact or before the scene even started?
Brandon: “We were always there. If we weren’t in front of the camera, then we were always touching whoever was operating the camera whether it was Jomo, RaMell, or Sam. We were always literally on their back or just on their shoulder touching so we could remain as present as possible for the other person and so they didn’t have to feel like it was too unnatural or they were too alone in any of it.”
Q: Ethan, where do you think Elwood’s hope comes from?
Ethan: “It comes from his grandmother. [She] raised him with so much love. I feel like starting from there, you can learn so much about who Elwood is and why he is the way that he is, his experience of being raised that way and then having figures like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fight for a better world. Being able to see himself in a figure like that and see someone who’s larger than life for him is an example of what he can become, what he can be a part of, and how impactful human beings can be in any given situation and space.”
“Nickel Boys” is available in a limited theatrical release and can be seen in Utah this weekend. For more interviews and reviews head to the “Shows” tab and pick “See It or Skip It” on ABC4.com
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor
Q: Thank you so much for letting me come and talk to you about your role and this film that is so powerful and so emotional, but unique in the sense of how they’re filming this and and also each individual character’s perspectives. I feel like you’re the heart of this film, especially when both the boys are coming to you and getting energy and getting the ability to continue on with their hardships. What was it like being approached for this role at the beginning, and how did you find your character as you were discovering it?
Aunjanue: “I was so happy. I was so glad because I just think RaMell Ross is extraordinary. So I was just so happy to be a part of it in any way. We had a few conversations. We didn’t talk a lot, but the conversations that we had were rich. We talked about Hattie being who she was and being affected to the point of mental illness. Then we did a take of a scene where she was disheveled and her hair was, you know, off and uncombed and we did a couple takes, and both of us said, no, that’s not who she is. That’s not who she is. Even in this most traumatic, violent of times, emotionally violent of times, she still has pride and she still has to be Elwood’s tomorrow. She still has to be his horizon. So she can’t present that she’s falling apart because she has to make him believe that he can be free again and he will live to see a day outside of this Hell.”
Q: “Elwood’s tomorrow.” That sounds beautiful and it’s so true. I feel like Hattie, she’s in the film in the most pivotal moments but at the same time, I wanted so much more. Do you think there’s a cut where we get a POV perspective of Hattie, of what she’s going through during this story?
Aunjanue: “I don’t think so, but I did do a scene that didn’t end up in the film. So, I don’t know, maybe RaMell will do a director’s cut or something like that. The great thing about it is that I’m here talking to you. We’re here because of what happened with these boys at the Dozier school and neither of their families got justice as a result of it. I hope that at some point there could be a “Nickel Boys” accompanying documentary, so folks will understand and know that this really happened.”
Q: What was the biggest challenge with filming in this POV perspective, where you’re acting alongside a camera?
Aunjanue: “You’re acting with the camera. Because it’s a camera and it’s a machine, it doesn’t smile. It can’t touch you. You know, all the things that I need as an actor is to have that from another human being, so it was hard. But I had to use it.”
“Nickel Boys” is available in a limited theatrical release and can be seen in Utah this weekend. For more interviews and reviews head to the “Shows” tab and pick “See It or Skip It” on ABC4.com
Note: See It or Skip It is proudly owned and produced by Patrick Beatty. ABC4 is a broadcast partner, but the show, its content, and opinions are independently created.
See It or Skip It 