Ethan Herisse was in the middle of an inorganic chemistry lecture when he got the call that would change his life. The UC Irvine student was taking notes in class when his phone flashed up with an emergency call from his reps. He excused himself to see what the fuss was about, and received the news that he’d landed the role of Elwood Curtis in the movie “Nickel Boys,” one of this season’s awards contenders.
“I freaked out outside, walked back into the lecture, did not take any more notes,” he recalls. “I told my friend, ‘I’m not going to be back for the rest of the class.’”
Less than a month later — after withdrawing for the quarter, but graduating this past March — he found himself on set in Louisiana joining Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Daveed Diggs and fellow newcomer Brandon Wilson to begin filming.
“I was kind of happy to be out of there,” Herisse says. “It was a hard class.”
“Nickel Boys,” which is based on Colson Whitehead’s 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Nickel Boys,” is directed by RaMell Ross, best known for his documentary “Hale County This Morning, This Evening.” The film is visually one of the most unique of this year’s awards crop: it was shot in a first person point-of-view, and is Ross’ first non-documentary film. After premiering at Telluride and opening the New York Film Festival, it was finally released in theaters Friday and has already been nominated for best film at the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards.
“When we wrapped, we didn’t really have an idea of what it would look like. We had a feeling that it would be special and the hope that it would be good based off of the script and the way that everything felt while we were filming, but still, it’s uncharted territory with this film in a lot of different ways,” Herisse says. “When I saw it for the first time back in June this year, and after hours of sitting with it and all of the emotions that watching it brought, the thing that I felt the most was a real desire to share it with as many people as possible because this thing really affects you. If you accept the visual language of the film, it can really, really move you and be a special experience, and I want to talk to people about that.”
The story follows Elwood and Turner, played by Wilson, two Black teenagers who are sent to a reform school in Florida in the 1960s. The school, Nickel Academy, was inspired by the Dozier School for Boys, which was permanently closed in 2011 after decades of abuse, torture and murder.
Having seen the film four times now, Herisse says the experience is so immersive and intense he forgets it’s him he’s watching on the screen.
“It felt like I was pulled out of my body for two-and-a-half hours, and I didn’t realize it while it was happening. I was just so deep into the world and to these characters and to everything that was happening,” he says. “When the credits run and I saw my name and I saw Brandon’s name, then I started crying because I was suddenly back in my body overwhelmed with emotion, and I had realized for the first time since starting the movie that that’s what we created. That’s what we were a part of. It was really amazing.”
Herisse took his first acting class when he was around age 10, initially just to keep his sister company. Turns out he was rather taken with it, and within a couple of years the family was moving from Massachusetts to Los Angeles so he could pursue acting more seriously.
“Sitting there at 12, you cannot really understand how massive that is. You kind of get it. You kind of understand that it’s a big deal: ‘Oh, they’re selling the house and moving away from our family on both sides, and we’re not going to be able to drive to Virginia for Thanksgiving anymore,’” Herisse says of his parents. “But sitting here at 24, for the rest of my life, that is something that I’m going to work toward thanking them for.”
He broke out in Ava DuVernay’s Netflix series “When They See Us,” taking his first break from college, but always knew finishing his chemistry degree was something he wanted.
“I was undeclared in my first few years and stumbled upon having to take chemistry, and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I took AP chem in high school and it was good. I get this, let’s make it my major,’ which sounds impulsive, but I tried so many different kinds of classes and nothing really sparked my interest like chemistry did,” he says.
It might not sound like a degree in chemistry would come in handy while diving into roles, but Herisse sees some overlap.
“In chemistry, when you’re carrying out experiments, things can go wrong and you just don’t know why, or it’s certain factors that may be beyond your control. Sometimes you think things are going and you don’t get the desired results, and that’s completely expected. It’s completely okay, and as someone who felt like they wanted to get everything right on the first try and never wanted to make mistakes, that was a really comforting thing to lean into,” he says. “With performing, you also have to be open to things just not working out the way that you expect them to, and you also have to be open to change and maybe not getting the desired results. But I think where the similarity is is that you’ve got to pick yourself back up, begin again, find out what does work, and it’s okay to fall flat on your face so long as you’re able to get back up again. That’s one cool similarity.”
