As a young man, Elwood Curtis (Herisse) is wrongfully accused as an accomplice to car robbery.
Herisse and Wilson were gracious enough to sit down with Collider’s ownSteve Weintraubto talk about all thingsNickel Boys.
COLLIDER: Let me start by saying congrats on the movie.
Image via Amazon MGM Studios
I thought you guys did such a great job.
ETHAN HERISSE: That’s crazy.What?
How do you know?
Image via Amazon MGM Studios
[Laughs]
I’m just curious what that was like.
BRANDON WILSON: Which sketch was it?
HERISSE: It wasnt the Substitute Teacher one.
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.
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 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.
HERISSE: Dude, yeah.
It was a great time.
I got to get out of school that day.
I didn’t even watchKey & Peeleat the time, either.
I can’t even remember how I got that role.
WILSON: Almost immediately, from the jump.
Seeing RaMells previous documentary,Hale County This Morning, This Evening, it’s very clear and obvious.
Can you sort of talk about that?
We loved the script.
We’ll figure it out.
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.
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.
Thats what that preparation looked like.
It was just a different way.
HERISSE: This moment.
The moment that’s on the poster.
It’s one of my favorite moments of the movie.
Seeing that setup was pretty crazy.
They put those two images together to have that scene that you see in the movie.
It’s also a great scene.
HERISSE: It’s a really awesome scene.
But still, there are so many people who around who are so supportive, like Kim was there.
I was leaning on her crying.
But yeah, that was the challenging one, I suppose.
Nickel Boysis in theaters now.
