How would you react if a film you starred in was unexpectedly nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars? By popping a bottle of champagne, jumping up and down, or bragging on social media, maybe. But Brandon Wilson, who leads RaMell Ross’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Nickel Boys alongside Ethan Herisse, did none of these things when the drama got the nod alongside titles including Anora, The Brutalist, Conclave, The Substance and Wicked last month. “I was excited,” the 31-year-old actor promises ahead of the awards show this Sunday. “[But] it’s funny. It’s like that expression: ‘Once you’ve seen how the sausage is made’. I don’t care about the sausage anymore.”
While awards may be frivolous, Nickel Boys is nevertheless remarkable. Wilson plays Turner, a teenager with an abundance of effortless charm despite living in the hellish reform school Nickel Academy. It’s here – where children are routinely beaten and abused – that he befriends his bookish classmate Elwood (Herisse) who’s unfairly incarcerated after unknowingly hitching a ride in a stolen Chevy convertible. Turner, a long-term resident, shows Elwood how to make their cruel reality marginally more bearable with afternoons spent listening to music or swimming in the pool at a local woman’s house where they’ve been sent to paint her porch. While Elwood quietly collects evidence against the racist institution to take the organisation down and set himself free, Turner is more resigned to his fate. “He works within his box,” Wilson says. “He believes in the reality of his cage. But he’s smart enough to furnish it to his likings.”
We chat over Zoom in late January while relentless wildfires continue to rip through Los Angeles, leaving the ruins of burned homes and palm trees in their wake. Wilson sits on the floor of his bedroom in nearby Burbank, 15 miles from the worst of the destruction. “The smoke was surrounding us but we were clear of the fire’s direct path,” he explains, sipping on tea, eyes still sleepy for the 9am call. Despite flames still burning across the county, the actor notes how alarmingly fast Hollywood normality has resumed. “Everything’s on fire and it’s these moments that reveal the fragility of [life],” he says. “And you’re like, ‘well, all right, I guess we’re just gonna keep going’… I don’t want to talk flippantly about it.”
Wilson was born in Atlanta, Georgia, moving to California with his mum and brother at the age of nine – after his father died. With showbiz ambition that Wilson admits is a mystery to him now, he told his mother he wanted to become an actor when he was just six years old. “It is young, and it’s strange,” he reflects. Still, his mum enrolled him in the John Robert Powers talent academy programme and Wilson quickly began to land small roles in low budget films. Notably, the western Set Apart alongside Richard Roundtree in 2009, the football biographical drama Pelé: Birth of a Legend in 2016 and sports drama The Way Back with Ben Affleck in 2020. “I was mostly just a basketball player in that one,” says Wilson, who concedes acting alongside the Argo star was “cool” but “he’s just a person”.
It’s when talking about the making of Nickel Boys that Wilson, softly spoken, unshakably relaxed, appears truly proud. Set in the 1960s South and based on the story of the now-closed Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida, where dozens of unmarked graves were uncovered on the property in the last decade, the film serves as a legacy for those who lost their lives at the institution. “It makes you more connected to those people who could just remain stories or statistics,” Wilson says. “[Ross] wanted to show that everyone back then felt the same range of emotions we do today. To give them a full life.”
Shot over two and a half months in Louisiana, Nickel Boys is executed from the first person perspective; meaning every horrifying plot development is witnessed through Turner or Elwood’s eyes. Because we’re a country of David Mitchell and Robert Webb addicts, this technique has been often somewhat inappropriately likened to the much-loved Channel 4 POV comedy Peep Show. “I watched an episode!” says Wilson when I apologetically ask about the comparison. “My manager is from the UK and when he heard about Nickel Boys, he immediately said ‘It’s Peep Show’. I do like that humour sometimes,” he admits. “I think Turner uses humour as a survival tactic.”
Like Mitchell and Webb, Wilson and Herisse were often acting straight into the camera, standing nearby the operator, or had equipment rigged up to their chest to create the perspective effect. “You don’t get to look into someone’s eyes,” Wilson reflects of the acting challenge. “But there’s still life in the camera lens. You can still feel the person’s presence…I knew it was gonna be beautiful.”
Nickel Boys looks gorgeous, yes, but the content is hard to stomach. Boys, who still delight in catching lizards, playing with army figures and eating ice cream, have been snatched from their families and are routinely beaten. The film’s whipping scenes are somehow all the more harrowing for happening off screen. We hear the violence in brutal detail and see the scars on the boys in the shower. “The third time I watched [the film] that part hit me harder,” Wilson says, apologising for the pun. “The reality of what some of those boys had gone through… I think the way that [violence] is shown is still so effective.”
When Elwood remarks on the horrors of Nickel Academy, Turner tells him that at least it’s more honest than the faux civility happening between white and black people in free society. “Out there, in here, it’s the same,” he says. “It’s just in here, nobody has to act fake anymore.” Wilson empathises with this perspective. “It’s even more ludicrous to be in a place like that and pretend that everything makes sense. Like there’s some sort of logic to these racial structures. To hide your emotions,” he says. “It takes so much energy to conceal the things you’re feeling on the inside… So, I definitely resonated with that.”
Wilson notes there was much-needed empathy on set when he and Herisse were winding down from filming the most harrowing scenes. “It was heavy,” he says, revealing he suffered migraines during the shoot. “But there was a lot of trust, a lot of emotional awareness on that set that didn’t feel common. People could see that I needed some space and it didn’t feel judgemental.”
Additionally, the star never felt uneasy around his fellow cast members, Hamish Linklater and Fred Hechinger, despite the fact they played a corrupt superintendent and school employee who oversee Nickel’s deplorable convict labour scheme. “They’re very powerful and moving actors,” says Wilson.” So, you definitely feel it [but] there’s still a part of my brain that knows we’re playing. It never became like, ‘that was too good, you’re probably really racist.’ There was no discomfort that lingered afterwards.”
In terms of what’s next, Wilson desperately wants to act again – in any capacity. “We’ve been doing press for Nickel Boys for the past four months,” he says. “Makes one feel insane. You’re speaking to people for four minutes, everyone’s asking the same questions, and you don’t get to have a conversation with a real person because you’re just selling the film,” he explains. “It feels crazy. I’ve never gotten delirious so fast. So, yeah, I want to go and play again. I like to write scripts… maybe go and direct if all the movements happen organically. Yeah, that seems OK,” Wilson adds, self-effacing to the last.
