‘Nickel Boys’ Stars on Their Unique Acting Experience: ‘It’s So Much Bigger Than the Screentime’

When actors Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson were getting ready to film “Nickel Boys,” they had no hesitation getting onboard with director RaMell Ross’s vision of telling the story through their characters’ literal point of view, the only slight concern in the back of their minds was “I hope my friends and family don’t hear this and are like, ‘Oh, wait, so you’re not in the movie?’,” said Herisse over breakfast in the corner of a restaurant within a West Hollywood hotel. 

Wilson’s mother’s reaction was more explicitly concerned, with the actor having done a found footage film not too long before “Nickel Boys” where “I was very much the cameraman for a lot of it,” he said. His response to his mom: “I’m not sure, but it’s probably going to be good, though.”

Needless to say, the Orion Pictures release, now in select theaters nationwide, was good. The film would go on to win countless critics awards after its world premiere at Telluride in December, including a Gotham Award for Breakthrough Performer for Wilson, and a Gen Next award from African American Critics Association for him and Herisse. 

“It’s so much bigger than the screentime that all of us have. It’s the art, it’s just so poetic,” said Herisse of the film adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a pair of young Black men trying to survive through their bid at an infamously horrific reform school in 1960s Florida. “There are just so many beautiful images that you get presented with while watching this movie and the addition of these characters in the story that’s being told. It all comes across really well despite the screentime or whatever. It doesn’t even feel that way. Because the POV, you’re with them the whole time, if you’re really present and watching, and lost in the world and everything.”

“Nickel Boys” was more the film neither actor knew could exist than the opportunity they always strived for. Having met during the callback process to play Elwood and Turner, respectively, Herisse and Wilson found parallels in their upbringing, from having gone to rival high schools at different times, to both getting their start in acting via the John Robert Powers program (which provides acting classes and audition opportunities to child models and actors for what can be a hefty price.) “I did end up getting the same agent as Dakota Fanning though, because she’s from Georgia,” said Wilson, a native of the state. “Obviously, she had a different amount of success.”

Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson in ‘Nickel Boys’.MGM/Courtesy Everett Collection

Similarly humble, Herisse said “I thought I was going to play basketball. I sucked,” when prefacing his acting origins. While Wilson joined the JRP program after randomly telling his mother at six years old that he wanted to be on TV, Herisse joined at his parent’s behest, to keep his younger sister company after she’d been recruited into the program doing pageants in their home state of Massachusetts. “I ended up having a really good time and I was like, ‘I want to do this, too,’” he said.

Though the pair of actors have a slight generational difference, there is a shared nostalgia around being at a point in their career where they can say “Back in my day…” in earnest. “Pilot season was one of the big buzzwords,” said Wilson. “It’s really, really mind-blowing to be talking about it, thinking, ‘Oh yeah, I remember pilot season. I remember when that used to be a thing,’” said Herisse.

Wilson jokes that when he started out as a kid, his goal was not exactly a focus on artistic fulfillment as much as it was “I want to be in ‘Power Rangers.’” Will Smith was one of his main role models, given that “‘Wild Wild West’ was my shit,” he said, but “My taste started to change.” Herisse could relate, having first wanted to be a Nickelodeon star, but being cast in Ava DuVernay’s Emmy-winning limited series “When The See Us” as a teenager, playing one of the Exonerated Five opposite his future “Nickel Boys” co-star Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, is when his sentiment shifted.

“Whoa, you can really be a part of these projects that inspire change, and can really affect people in this way,” he thought, “and work with these really incredible actors that really respect acting as a craft and have been doing it forever.” The prime example, again, being Ellis-Taylor.

“First I came in with this idea of misunderstanding, and judgment, and for a moment it was like, ‘I’m not even there! She’s just doing it by herself, I’m not even there,’” said Wilson, reflecting on a moment early in production where he compared notes with Herisse on working with the former Oscar nominee. “But then as I got to sit in there more, I was like, ‘Oh, no.’” He and Ellis-Taylor were filming a scene where her character Hattie, unable to hand deliver a package to her grandson Elwood, gives it to his friend Turner to ensure he receives it. 

Brandon Wilson, Ethan Herisse, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and RaMell Ross attend The Critics Choice Association’s 7th Annual Celebration of Black Cinema & Television in Los Angeles.Randy Shropshire/Getty Images for Critics Choice Association

“Once she gives Turner the package, you can’t even see it, but she asked me to put my arm out, so she had something to grab onto, and I was like, ‘Oh, she’s pulling us in,’” said Wilson. “Physically, but also with such presence and such power, and it was so silly of me to show up in his trailer and have to question how she was getting to these places.”

“When you work with her, you can’t help but think about ‘How is she doing this?’,” said Herisse. He’s again reminded of how silly it has been to see people judge the impact of their performances based on their time on camera. “I’ll see people say, ‘Aunjanue offers so much in limited minutes,’ and I’m like, ‘Man, how are you even able to process that it’s not as much screen time?’ Because when she’s on there, I don’t even know how you can conceptualize time. If you’re there with her, you’re just pulled in, and I’m not aware of how long she’s on-screen for. I just know that she’s on-screen and I’m like, ‘I’m in there,’” he said. “What she does in this movie is truly, truly incredible.” Wilson then leaned down toward the recorder on the table to make sure it clearly captured him stating “Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Best Supporting Actress.”

Dispelling some other misconceptions about how “Nickel Boys” was completed from a technical perspective, Wilson said “We didn’t wear the camera too much.” Director Ross, cinematographer Jomo Fray, and camera operator Sam Ellison “would have the camera, and we’d be really close to them, and we’d just remain present, and then they’d become our body and our eyes.” Mentioning they would even join bodies, Wilson and Herisse physically link up, almost as if it’s from muscle memory, to demonstrate what they mean.

Only seldom would one of them have to wear a rig to achieve the effect of the scene being from their character’s POV. “It’s interesting when you’re really in it, when you’re present, how all that stuff fades away even when you’re off-camera,” said Herisse. “I was just like, ‘Nope, there is no camera operator here. There are not 50 people behind me right now.’ It’s just the world that we’re in.”

“Even looking into the lens, that just starts to all fade into natural movements” said Wilson. “If you step back, it all looks very unnatural, but as you start to get into the rhythm, it just became what we were doing.” The process drew the pair closer to a film crew than they had ever been before on any of the sets they’d ever been on, and even inspired them to think about other jobs within filmmaking they may want to try.

‘Nickel Boys’MGM/Courtesy Everett Collection

“Seeing how he leaned into the whole collaborative process with all of these other people was really like, ‘Well, yeah, if that’s what directing is like, I’d be interested,’” said Herisse of working with Ross. “Being behind the camera and seeing those images and everything, I was like, ‘Oh, man. I guess there’s a lot of technical stuff going on, but if this is what you get to look at, that’d be pretty cool.’”

“I write sometimes, and I do sometimes feel that I want to direct the things that I’ve written,” said WIlson. “So in watching [Ross] getting to do this thing, having this clear vision, and just being so fearless about it, it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, you can just do the thing and just commit to it.’”

It is worth noting, too, that the actors’ “Nickel Boys” experience was as fun as it was fulfilling. “Now I know that I want there to be a connection with me. Something that I believe in, one way or another,” said Herisse, describing his thought process around what projects he wants to do next. “If I was presented with the script for ‘Bottoms’ I would be like, ‘Yeah, I would love to be a part of this.’ That was one of my favorite theater-going experiences last year,” said the actor. Now speaking for him and Wilson, he said “It’s less about doing it just cause, or for money or whatever. It’s ‘Does this speak to me in some way? Or would this be fun?’”

“Nickel Boys,” an Orion Pictures release, is now in theaters in New York and Los Angeles.