Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor received Academy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and BET nominations, among many other accolades, for her performance as Oracene Price, the mother and tennis coach of Venus and Serena Williams, in Reinaldo Marcus Green’s 2021 feature King Richard. More recently, her work was recognized with a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination as part of the ensemble cast of Blitz Bazawule’s musical The Color Purple. Ellis-Taylor’s latest film role in Ava DuVernay’s Orgin, sees her play Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitizer Prize-winning journalist and author of the groundbreaking New York Times bestselling nonfiction book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.
DuVernay’s film skillfully takes the urgent thesis of Wilkerson’s book—that explores and deconstructs the destructive social hierarchies of caste with examples from India, Nazi Germany, and the United States—and weaves in the author’s personal story of immense loss and her compelling journey of research. The result is a rich, provocative, and unmissable work, that’s both emotionally potent and intellectually stimulating.
At the centre of the film is a captivating and nuanced performance by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, who spoke exclusively with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann about coming to the realization that she could make a career out of acting only around 12 years ago, taking on the role of Isabel Wilkerson, working with Ava DuVernay again after the Netflix miniseries When They See Us (for which Ellis-Taylor received an Emmy nomination), playing opposite Niecy Nash-Betts, and who she cites as her first queer icon.
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review: Before we get on to the film, could you take us back to what first ignited the passion for performing in you. Was it something that happened early on and when did you first start to think that there might be a career in acting?
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor: “I always knew that there was something queer about me. I think that queerness was an aperture to creativity because I was alone a lot as a result of that, but not knowing what it was. I was raised in a church, so we did a lot of plays and that kind of thing, we didn’t have a choice in the matter. But whatever this creative thing that was burning in me was, I never felt like it was going to express itself in acting. Someone else saw something in me and they encouraged me and they pushed me until I was actually a working actor. But it wasn’t until maybe 12 years ago or so that I said, ‘Okay, people continue to hire me and my people are really relying on me for this income, so I need to take this thing seriously’. So I was a late bloomer in that.”
Who was it that was pushing you and encouraging you, was it one person in particular?
“Yes, it was a man named Jim Barnhill. He lived to be 99 years old. He was a professor at Brown University and a visiting professor at Tougaloo College.”
It’s interesting that you say it was only about 12 years ago that you felt that, because you have been working as an actor for decades.
“For a long time, yeah, but I didn’t come to that realization before because I always felt like it was a fluke. I never had the presumption that it would continue, and even now I’m like, ‘Well, I hope I get a job’.”
When it came to Origin, when did you first read the book Caste and what kind of insight did that give you into Isabel Wilkerson personally?
“I read the book when Ava cast me in the film. I hadn’t read it before that. The wonderful thing about Miss Wilkerson as a writer, is that she writes with such personal transparency. For so many of the arguments in Caste, she uses herself as an example of why we need to look at this in a new way. Her personal pain is in every chapter in some way, so I could go to that as source material for the work that I did in the film.”
What did you make of Ava’s concept for her screenplay of adapting Caste by also bringing in Isabel Wilkerson’s personal life and her journey researching the book?
“I think that it’s such a smart approach and that came from the time that Ava spent with Miss Wilkerson, finding out that she had this really compelling personal journey that led up to her writing the book. Ava saw her as the hero of the story and made Miss Wilkerson the focus of the film.”
When it came to your approach to playing Isabel Wilkerson, was there anything in particular that helped you to find her as a character?
“Miss Wilkerson is a researcher, a thinker, and a public intellectual. I’m none of those things, but what I am, is an avid reader and I’m a writer. Her profession is in words and my joy and my inspiration is in words. I spend a lot of time with words. So I share that love of words with her and I could bring that to work with me. I’ve got a book with me everywhere I go. If I’m somewhere, then there’s a book with me and right now that book is Caste. I don’t go anywhere without it.”
You had already worked with Ava DuVernay on When They See Us, why did you want to collaborate with her again on Origin?
“When I worked with her on When They See Us, I was among a cast of thousands. I mean, she even says herself that she barely remembers me working on that series! I have had a couple of encounters with her and conversations with her through the years, but I did that series with her and then I went into the ether. Then we came back together on this. I wanted to work with her again because the kind of work that she does changes a city.”
“When When They See Us came out, it had an impact on the justice system in New York and on the political system in New York. I played Yusef Salaam’s mother, Sharon Salaam, and right now Yusef is going to be a New York City Councilman. A Councilman for the very city that tried to take his life away from him. Outside of him being an extraordinary man, I feel that When They See Us was instrumental in that. I wanted to continue that kind of work, so that’s why I wanted to work with Ava again.”
Her documentary 13th was another deeply impactful and meaningful film. I can’t think of another filmmaker that would have had the approach to Origin of making it so emotional and so stimulating but also so accessible. What kind of atmosphere does Ava create on set?
“Here’s the thing, I have to speak to my own experience. I have my headphones on and I’m somewhere in the corner a lot of the time. I try to stay away from that. But what I witnessed in her is that she hires people who are very good at what they do. I had a great team of women who worked with me in making sure that Isabel Wilkerson, the character, was in the fullness of her physically as much as she could appear to be. That team was Dominique Dawson, who did the costumes; Ashunta Sheriff-Kendricks who did my makeup; and Kim Kimble who did those glorious wigs that I wore in the film. Then LaLette Littlejohn did the hair and makeup for the rest of the characters in the film.”
“It’s interesting, sometimes you have someone who comes in and writes an amazing song for instance, and people notice the song, but people don’t necessarily give that attention to the folks like the hair and makeup department and the costume department, and their work is in every frame of the film. There’s nothing you see in the film that the women that I named didn’t have a say in or didn’t make happen.”
Watching the book burning sequence in the film, it’s hard not to think about the book bans happening today in the United States. A lot of LGBTQ+ books have been banned and Caste itself has been taken off library shelves in some states. How much was that on your mind, either as you were making the film, or now as the film is being released?
“It’s a dangerous book, to some people. It’s a dangerous book and I think that we have made a dangerous film and I delight in that danger because folks who think that it’s dangerous, they’re the ones that need to see it. We all need to see it, but what I’m hoping that will happen as a result of the film being finally out in theaters, is that it builds bridges from us to the folks who don’t look like us, who are outside of our class, outside of our caste, and that having those conversations can take us towards something better. We need something better.”
You have some great moments in the film with Niecy Nash-Betts who plays Isabel’s cousin Marion. There’s the beautiful scene where Marion is holding Isabel after an incredible loss, then there’s the bittersweet joy of them looking at old family photographs together, and Marion urging Isabel to make her book accessible. What was it like to create that on-screen relationship with Niecy?
“It’s easy to do with her because she’s an actor who operates in truth. There was nothing artificial in those scenes. We weren’t using our own words, we were using the words that Ava wrote, but if we didn’t have those words you would feel the same thing. We were sharing information that was nonverbal, that went beyond words, and that’s easy to do with with an actor like Niecy.”
Lastly, what’s your favourite piece of LGBTQ+ culture or person; someone or something that’s had an impact on you and resonated with you?
“I’m going to say Prince. Prince didn’t necessarily identify as a queer person, but he presented in a way that challenged our notions of gender. He had girl, boy, everybody, back when I was a kid, dressing like him, dressing in this effeminate way. It completely disrupted our notions of what gender was. We didn’t have an awareness of it, we didn’t know what we were doing, but he did that and he was my first queer icon.”
By James Kleinmann
Origin opens in theaters today, Friday, January 19th, 2024. Find out where the film is playing and how to gift tickets.
Phenomenal movie and cast! Bravo for the feature. Everyone needs to see this film!