This article delves into Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor's experience working with filmmaker RaMell Ross on his adaptation of Colson Whitehead's novel. It highlights the film's exploration of a dark chapter in American history and Ellis-Taylor's powerful performance as a grandmother searching for her grandson.
RaMell Ross’s striking adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, which draws from the true story of the abusive reformatory Dozier School in Jim Crow–era Florida, confronts a brutal chapter in American history through a radical first-person filmic POV. Ellis-Taylor plays one student’s grandmother, Hattie, who’s struggling to bring him back home. In increasingly devastating scenes, she breaks painful news while looking direct to camera.
“I’m tremendously affected by what happened to these boys,” she says. “Looking in eyes, I don’t need much to be triggered—but that’s very triggering for me.” It’s the latest in a line of powerful, emotional performances from Ellis-Taylor, whose movie career took off in her early 50s with King Richard, for which she received an Oscar nomination in 2022. Last year, she led Ava DuVernay’s ambitious, globe-trotting Origin to great acclaim, though the film struggled at the box office. She’s still fighting for great roles, realizing her road remains tougher than some of her contemporaries. Ellis-Taylor knows it’s important to talk about that experience too. Vanity Fair: You described for me a few years ago the process of “stalking” RaMell Ross. What about him and his documentary, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, struck you back then? Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor: Those first few moments, it’s also shot in POV. It’s a car driving really fast down a highway in Alabama, and you feel like you’re in the middle of a video game. But it’s also trees, and it’s houses, and it’s real. I knew immediately that I was in for a two-hour experience that I had not experienced up until this point. I believe in cinema. Seeing the way that he captured the lives of that community in Alabama—I see a lot of photography and film, even writing, about Black Southern life, and I very rarely feel that I’m reflected in it, or truly witnessed by it. I never feel like I’m seeing the work of kindre
AUNJANUE ELLIS-TAYLOR RAMELL ROSS COLLISON WHITEHEAD FILM ADAPTATION AMERICAN HISTORY DOCUMENTRY
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