Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor Signs With CAA (Exclusive)

The Nickel Boys star and King Richard Oscar nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor has signed with CAA. 

Ellis-Taylor stars in Amazon MGM Studio’s Nickel Boys, the feature adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from producer Plan B. Nickel Boys follows the friendship between two young men sent to a segregated reform school in Florida in the 1960s, with Ellis-Taylor playing a grandmother, Hattie, during the height of Jim Crow.

Ellis-Taylor also starred alongside Andra Day in Exhibiting Forgiveness, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. And she portrayed Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson in Ava DuVernay’s Origin, based on Wilkerson’s groundbreaking book Caste and which earned Ellis-Taylor a 2019 Emmy nomination.  

Her other credits include The Help, If Beale Street Could Talk and The Color Purple. She also received a second Emmy nom for her work on HBO’s Lovecraft Country. Besides the Oscar nomination for King Richard, Ellis-Taylor was also nominated for a BAFTA, Golden Globe, Critics Choice and a SAG Award in that role.

Ellis-Taylor will be honored with the Social Impact Award for her advocacy for social justice as the founder and CEO of Miss Myrtis Films and co-founder of Take it Down America at the upcoming Critics Choice Association’s Celebration of Black Cinema and Television. 

Ellis-Taylor’s live theater credits includes Broadway productions like The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Drowning Crow and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.  

She continues to be represented by Tina Thor and Ian Ames at TMT Entertainment Group.