Why Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor Rejects 'Hollywood Hooey' and Still Lives in the South: 'Work to Be Done There' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor at the 2024 Gotham Awards on Dec. 2.Photo:Taylor Hill/WireImage

Taylor Hill/WireImage

Aunjanue Ellis-Tayloris much more at home in the South than in Hollywood. And that’s not just figurative: Though she’s starred in a slew of critically acclaimed movies, the Oscar nominee has split her time between Atlanta and her home state of Mississippi.

“I’m a Southerner, newsflash,” Ellis-Taylor, 55, quips wryly. “I always have to have some part of me — a thumb, or an elbow, or a knee — in the South.”

Born in San Francisco and a graduate of Brown University and New York University but raised on her grandmother’s farm in Mississippi, theNickel Boysstar has a simple explanation for remaining true to her roots: “There’s work to be done there. There’s work to be done everywhere, and you can’t do that work unless you’re present.”

Plus, navigating the industry in Los Angeles often feels “strange,” she tells PEOPLE. “My friend calls it ‘Hollywood hooey.’ … I want to do my job.”

Ellis-Taylor calls herself “very vocal about how I feel about stuff in the world,” which has been an asset to her impressive career since her Oscar-nominated breakout inKing RichardwithWill Smith.

“These directors might hear that and they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s the lady we want and need,’ ” she admits. “I’ve had a lot of [jobs] that have, I would say, aligned with how I see the world, how I fight things that I don’t agree with in the world, what I want to bring visibility to.”

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in ‘Nickel Boys’.Courtesy of Orion Pictures

Courtesy of Orion Pictures

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In the past year alone, her résumé has includedAva DuVernay’s Isabel Wilkerson adaptationOrigin, about a writer uncovering the roots of discrimination;The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, a tale of sisterly friendship in mid-century America costarringSanaa LathanandUzo Aduba;Lee Daniels’Andra Day-starring demonic horror flickThe Deliverance; and theAndré Holland-ledExhibiting Forgiveness, a story of art healing trauma.

Not only didNickel Boys, director RaMell Ross’ buzzy adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel, fit that bill, it gave Ellis-Taylor the opportunity to tell a distinctly Southern piece of history. She plays Hattie, the grandmother of a Black teen in 1960s Florida sent to an abusive reform school called Nickel Academy — a version of the real-lifeDozier School for Boysand other segregated institutions like it.

“We all need to be more informed about these schools and their prevalence around the country, that this is not an isolated thing,” she says. For an untold number of boys who faced systemic abuse in reform schools, a “conspiracy of silence,” as she puts it, allowed it to continue for decades.

(Left-right:) Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and Ethan Herisse at the Italy premiere of ‘Nickel Boys’ on Oct. 16.

“We have the power to give these children a voice, to grieve for them, and in that grieving become active in making it right,” says Ellis-Taylor.Nickel Boysis “our shot, our chance doing for these children what no one did, which was hear them.”

Nickel Boys, which stars Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger and Daveed Diggs, is in select theaters Dec. 13. Among Ellis-Taylor’s upcoming projects is the movie adaptation of Todd Connor’s autobiographical novelLiz Here Now, about a Black maid standing up to a white family’s child abuse in the 1960s.

source: people.com