Summary

Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson act in
Nickel Boys
, a powerful film showcasing friendship and survival in a reform school.
The film alternates between 1962 Tallahassee and the present, showcasing the harrowing experiences at a reform school.
The actors immediately knew
Nickel Boys
was a special movie due to the unique POV filming style and director RaMell Ross’s vision.

Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson are two young, wonderful actors working today, helping to elucidate the everyday experience of many Black Americans. Herisse co-starred in When They See Us, Ava Duvernay’s miniseries about the controversial Central Park Five, as well as The American Society of Magical Negroes alongside David Alan Grier, while Wilson stepped up in Ben Affleck’s basketball drama The Way Back. Now, the two actors act alongside one another in director RaMell Ross’s highly anticipated adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s 2020 Pultizer Prize-winning novel Nickel Boys.

Inspired by the infamously violent Dozier School for Boys and filmed in a unique POV style, Nickel Boys alternates between Jim Crow era Tallahassee, Florida in 1962 and the present. As a young man, Elwood Curtis (Herisse) is wrongfully accused as an accomplice to car robbery. After being sent to a segregated reform school called Nickel Academy, he forms a tight friendship with a boy named Turner (Wilson) as they do their best to survive abuse by the school and those in charge.

Herisse and Wilson were gracious enough to sit down with Collider’s own Steve Weintraub to talk about all things Nickel Boys. They discuss the “joy and light” of shooting something very special in New Orleans, knowing that “easygoing” director Ross was leading with love, and Herisse’s exceptionally memorable Key & Peele past.

Ethan Herisse Cut His Teeth on ‘Key & Peele’s “Cool Teacher vs. Class Clown”
“It was amazing.”

COLLIDER: Let me start by saying congrats on the movie. I thought you guys did such a great job. I do like throwing curveballs at the beginning of an interview before we get into this, so I have to ask the most important question — what was it like being Student #1 on Key & Peele ?

ETHAN HERISSE: That’s crazy. What? How do you know? [Laughs]

I’m just curious what that was like.

BRANDON WILSON: Which sketch was it?

HERISSE: It wasn’t the “Substitute Teacher” one. I think it was just one with a teacher where Keegan [Michael Key] was wearing some sort of rat tail thing, and [Jordan] Peele was just a goofy kid. His name was Jimmy, and he was just messing around in class, and it makes Keegan tweak out. I played one of the students in the classroom laughing at whatever Jordan was doing. At one point, Keegan grabs my hand and starts slapping it. He’s like, “Is that funny? Is that funny?!” It was amazing. It was a lot of fun. I was, like, 13 or something. I’m so blown away that you’ve seen that.

You have to throw curveballs at the beginning. That’s the way I view interviews. But I would imagine that was amazing for you being that young and getting experience to understand what it’s like being on a set.

HERISSE: Dude, yeah. It was a great time. I got to get out of school that day. I didn’t even watch Key & Peele at the time, either. I can’t even remember how I got that role. But yeah, later in life, it was a fun thing to tell people that I was in a Key & Peele sketch.

‘Nickel Boys’ Stars Knew the Film Was Special From the Get-Go
“We were game.”

Jumping into why I get to talk to you guys, at what point did you realize, “Wait, this could be a special movie?”
WILSON: Almost immediately, from the jump. Seeing RaMell’s previous documentary, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, it’s very clear and obvious. We knew. I mean, not to sound overconfident, I had no idea what it would look like, but I definitely felt… Whoever I was telling as we were making this movie, I’d tell all my friends, “This is special.”

I loved the cinematography in this and the way he does POV, but I’m curious for the two of you, what was your reaction when he was telling you that’s the way he wanted to shoot it? Because as actors, you’re also going to be responsible for helping to bring the cinematography to life with that POV perspective. Can you sort of talk about that?

HERISSE: We really started to talk about it and realized that it was real right before shooting, when we were in New Orleans. We’re a few days out from shooting, but even then, we just weren’t sure what that was going to look like. We were game. We loved the script. There was a connection with Turner, there was a connection with Elwood, and so it was like, “However we’re going to present this, we’re in.” Then getting to talk to RaMell and see how easygoing he was, how he was going to be a great person to work with, it was like, “Alright, just lead us in the direction. We’ll figure it out.”

Image via Amazon MGM Studios

I’m always curious how actors get ready before the first day of filming. This is material that really matters, and it’s really important storytelling. For the two of you, what was it like in those weeks and months getting ready for that first day to step on set where you felt like, “I can inhabit the person I’m playing and have that confidence to pull everything off?”

HERISSE: I think what was special about Elwood is that there was so much that I admired about him. My entry point to connecting with him was through love. It was through the love that he had that was given to him by his grandmother, Hattie. That was something that I was fortunate enough to be able to relate to. I’m fortunate enough to say that I was raised with a lot of love in my life, so being able to connect to that really helped. It’s almost like hitting that entry point just informed everything else about Elwood that I admired — his intelligence, his bravery, his morals, his involvement politically in his community. It was just about taking all of those things, starting with that one entry point, and then taking all those things that I admired and trying to bring them to life honestly. That’s what that preparation looked like.

WILSON: My casting process was kind of long, so I got the opportunity to live with the sides and live with Turner for a longer stretch of time in the preparation process of it. By the time we got there, I had already done the five long scenes so many times, so I was already in it by the time the first day came. It was just a different way.

This Technical ‘Nickel Boys’ Shot Turned Out to Be Ethan Herisse’s Favorite
Image via Amazon MGM Studios

So, which shot or sequence in the movie ended up being the real challenge to pull off, whether because of camera move or dialogue, whatever?

HERISSE: This moment. The moment that’s on the poster. That was a really cool set-up. It’s the only moment that you see both Elwood and Turner at the same time in a scene while they’re talking to each other. It’s one of my favorite moments of the movie. Seeing that setup was pretty crazy. First, the camera was on a track on a dolly that was looking up at the ceiling, or whatever it was at that surface, and then we had to walk alongside it. I was looking at a video the other day, and it was me walking and looking up and walking and stepping over some of the tracks. That was for one aspect of it, and then they flip it, and the camera is above us, and we’re walking, and we’re following it. They put those two images together to have that scene that you see in the movie. It was really cool to see how it goes from this wild technical setup to this really beautiful moment that you see in the movie.

It’s also a great scene.

HERISSE: It’s a really awesome scene.

WILSON: Nothing stands out in my memory as challenging, I think because there was so much joy and light in making it. There was a day when Elwood’s character is shot — I had a really bad migraine that day, so that’s the only day I remember as challenging because I just was not having it. But still, there are so many people who around who are so supportive, like Kim was there. I was leaning on her crying. It was ridiculous. But yeah, that was the challenging one, I suppose.

Nickel Boys is in theaters now.

Your changes have been saved Nickel Boys Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys chronicles the powerful friendship between two young African American men navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida.Director RaMell Ross Cast Ethan Herisse , Brandon Wilson , Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor , Hamish Linklater , Fred Hechinger , Daveed Diggs , Luke Tennie , Sunny Mabrey , Gralen Bryant Banks , Sara Osi Scott , Rachel Whitman Groves , Escalante Lundy , LeBaron Foster Thornton , Ethan Cole Sharp , Najah Bradley , Mike Harkins , Jimmie Fails Runtime 140 Minutes Writers RaMell Ross , Joslyn Barnes , Colson Whitehead Expand

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