How ‘Nickel Boys’ Stars Brandon Wilson and Ethan Herisse Found Each Other

By the time Brandon Wilson auditioned for the film Nickel Boys opposite his to-be costar Ethan Herisse, he had already done a chemistry read with a different actor. But something was different about working with Herisse.

"I recognized pretty quickly that whatever they were looking for, it felt like they had found it," Wilson remembers. "You can't put it into words, but as we started doing it, this character came to life in a different way."

Herisse, however, didn't think he had gotten the role of Elwood, a Black teenager in Jim Crow-era Florida who is sent to an abusive reform school after accidentally hitching a ride in a stolen car. Wilson plays Turner, the charismatic student already indoctrinated to the terrors of life at Nickel Academy.

Director RaMell Ross was watching their audition via Zoom; when they finished, Ross said goodbye to Herisse. To Wilson, he said, "We'll talk soon." Herisse thought, Oh—I didn't get that. Actually, he had.

Now Wilson, 31, and Herisse, 24, are on the awards-campaign trail for the critically-acclaimed film, based on Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The Monday before we talk on a video call, I'd run into them at the Gotham Awards in New York, where Ross won Best Director and Wilson took home the Breakthrough Performer trophy.

Both Wilson and Herisse were rocking incredible fits that night—Wilson wore a floor-length cape, while Herisse opted for a leather suit jacket and tie emblazoned with the words "Louis Vuitton." They've been embracing the fashion side of awards season. Herisse calls it a "really fascinating creative space." Wilson, who admits that he wears sandals most of the time when left to his own devices, adds, "Shout out Margiela—send me free clothes."

Chatting with them, you can see why that audition made it so clear they were exactly right for their characters.

Herisse—like Elwood, a brilliant student who is on his way to college classes when his life is cruelly interrupted—is cerebral. He's the kind of person who gets a degree in chemistry from UC Irvine while still very much intending to pursue acting. He had to withdraw for a time to film Nickel Boys—as he had when he got the role of Yusef Salaam in When They See Us, Ava DuVernay's Netflix series about the Central Park Five—but still graduated in March.

"For whatever reason, I took some chem classes and was like, 'Ah, this makes sense,'" he says. "I was interested in the idea of being in a lab and working with chemicals and synthesizing stuff so I committed to it and continued to commit to it and made it."

Wilson, meanwhile, is a little more elusive—charming, with sort of a mischievous energy, not unlike Turner. Turner has been at Nickel longer and understands how to maneuver the cruelties of the system. Midway through our conversation he decides to gently call out Herisse for mispronouncing castmate Ja'Quan Monroe Henderson's name wrong on set. "Ethan couldn't get it right," he says. "Or maybe he only did it once and the story is better if I say he kept doing it." ("This was one time!" Herisse protests, laughing.)

As actors, they had similar career paths. They both started as children, driven by impulses to performing they couldn't really articulate at the time. Though Wilson grew up in Georgia and Herisse in Massachusetts, they were both enrolled in a program called John Robert Powers, which runs conferences for aspiring actors and models. Those experiences helped them get signed with representation. From there, they moved to Los Angeles.

"But all of that was a very long time ago. I think the bonds that were formed go beyond that, both on screen and off screen," Herisse says.

And nothing in their acting pasts could have prepared them for how Ross was approaching Nickel Boys. The film is executed from the first person perspective. It begins as if the audience is seeing through Elwood's eyes. Later, it switches to Turner's viewpoint, and then moves back and forth as the story builds to its shattering conclusion.

Before they got to set in Louisiana, Herisse and Wilson had no real concept of what, practically, that would mean for them. Immediately, however, they were fitted for rigs that would help them wear a camera on their chests. When they were off screen and the lens was essentially being their eyes, they would try to remain as close to the operator as possible. However, when they were acting opposite the camera they would have to look straight into it.

"After a while you just try to start to see each other's face in the lens," Wilson says.

"It's so funny because we've been saying that, and it really is the truth, but I feel like it definitely sounds like we're crazy," Herisse adds, with a giggle.

For Herisse, his preparation was all about "connecting" to Elwood. His entry point, he discovered, was the "love that he was brought up with, and that informed everything else about him—all the things you admire and make him such a great kid." Wilson, meanwhile, singled out one line in Ross and Joslyn Barnes’ screenplay, in which Turner says that he knows his mother loved him, "she just loved liquor more."

"Him at the same time expressing his loneliness and abandonment, but also still having some remembrance of love in those moments," Wilson explains. "It kind of revealed his pain."

Despite the difficulty of the material, the set was full of joy. A counselor was present for some of the most intense scenes of violence, but also was available on more chill days. "She was always present to just talk and hang out," Herisse says. "You could feel that with everyone on set so I think that's how we were able to get through it even though what we're dealing with is very sensitive."

The experience of watching the finished film was entirely different from the experience of filming it for both men, however. It was only then that the weight of what they’d accomplished sank in. Wilson saw Nickel Boys for the first time all by himself in a screening room. It was physically draining, and emotionally disorienting.

"Something about the first watch—I felt really tired afterwards, but I think it's because of the experience of the film, like not in a bad way at all," he says. "I didn't expect to be affected in that way. Me and Ethan we talk about this, like, lower stomach—for some reason our hands go there when we talk about that experience."

Herisse, even though he wasn't alone, felt similar.

"I wasn't recognizing myself when I saw myself on screen," he recalls. "That connection wasn't happening." He wasn't seeing Wilson either. When the credits finally rolled, he snapped back into his body.

"Suddenly, when I realized that I had just seen our names, I started crying because that's the moment I realized, Oh—that was our movie. That's what we did. That was us."