Aunjanue Ellis (‘King Richard’) on why getting Oscar love for playing Oracene Price is so significant [Complete Interview Transcript]
Aunjanue Ellis is celebrating her very first Oscar nomination for her performance in “King Richard.” The actress plays Oracene Price, the mother of tennis icons Venus and Serena Williams, and the wife of the film’s protagonist, Richard Williams.
Ellis recently spoke with Gold Derby editor Christopher Rosen about Oscar nominations morning, her process of getting into character and the importance of honoring Price’s story onscreen. Watch the video interview above and read the complete transcript below.
Gold Derby: Congratulations, I was so excited for you. We’re a week past the Oscar nominations, but what was that morning like for you before we talk about the film?
Aunjanue Ellis: Right, well, I hid all day and didn’t have my phone on at all. I didn’t have the expectation of it, but other people in my life did, and I just didn’t want to disappoint anybody if I didn’t get nominated. So I just cut my phone off and cleaned my house all day and did laundry and read and just and ate everything I wanted to eat. And then around 11 o’clock that night, I was just like, “Just face it, whatever happens happens,” and then I turned my phone on and I just saw, like, 100 texts from people, and I said, “OK, something good must have happened this morning.”
GD: That’s amazing. It’s probably a really good way to handle it, honestly. Who did you respond to first when you turned on your phone?
AE: When I turned my phone on my sister called me immediately because she had been trying to call me all day. So she was just like, “Where have you been? I’ve been worried about you. Oh my God!” So it really was just not really about the Oscars, it was just like, “Are you OK? I’m about to send somebody to make sure you’re all right.” So I talked to her and then my manager called me, and I think he was drunk on the streets of Brooklyn (laughs). He was just going on. But then I tried to go to sleep. Of course, I couldn’t go to sleep at all after that, and then I woke up and just called all these people that had called me and texted me.
GD: Amazing. I mean, you didn’t see it, but people were very excited that you were nominated. So I think it’s great. I want to ask you, we can go back to the Oscars later, but obviously, you’re nominated because the performance is so great and I think you’ve gotten a lot of great reviews and all this acclaim. You’ve played real people before, obviously. I think your first Emmy nomination was for “When They See Us,” played a real person. When you’re playing a real person, like Oracene in “King Richard” here, do you start from the same place? How do you approach playing a real person and how did you do that on this film, like where you started?
AE: Well, I try to get as much information as I can get. If you’re lucky, in the case of “When They See Us,” I was lucky to be able to talk to, fortunate to be able to talk to Sharonne Salaam, Yusef Salaam’s mother, and had a great conversation with her and use that conversation as building blocks for what I ultimately did in the series. We don’t have that all the time, and I didn’t have that with Miss Oracene. I wasn’t able to talk to her, but what I did have were these epic recordings that they did of her, and I just listened to those recordings over and over and over again. But what I think is important, at least for me, is that you get the facts, you get the truth as it’s told to you, or as you learn it from the person, but after that, you have to build a character, and I’m not trying to do a sort of… what am I trying to say here?
GD: Like an impersonation.
AE: An impersonation, exactly. That’s not what I do. I don’t have that ability. So what I have to do is, as well as I can, just try to tell the truth of that person. But also I have to use my skills of creation as best I can to create a character just like I would create any character in anything else because the reality is, I mean, we did have the gift of knowing specifically sometimes what did happen in these situations with Venus and Serena. Because there are recordings and video footage of them. But we don’t know what Richard and Miss Oracene would talk about in the middle of the night. We don’t know that. So that’s what we create. That’s what we make up. So I have that foundational truth, but then the rest of that is building character, and I approach that in the same way that I approach fictional characters as well.
GD: I want to ask you too, obviously, so I didn’t know a lot about Oracene, and I’ve seen interviews, like I knew of her, but not the details and how involved she was. She was such a key component in their family, and obviously, would train and coach and all these different things. What was your relationship, just broadly with tennis itself and having to learn the intricacies of the game while you played it? Because obviously she knew so much or knows so much about the sport and is such a great coach, too. Can you talk a little about that and did you do a crash course? I don’t know much about tennis. How much did you know? And how did you kind of do a crash course in that to really make it seem so authentic, which I think it does?
AE: Well, they made me take lessons, and notice I use the words, “made me.” (Laughs.) They made me do it, and I wanted to do it because I want to do everything I can in service of honoring Oracene as best as I can, but I’m just going to be transparent, it was not my favorite thing to do. But the producers, God bless them, they wanted it to look real, and I wanted it to look real as well. So they had me in tennis lessons three times a week for several weeks. I was working with the former tennis pro, tennis teacher, tennis coach, and he was great with me. And he got me… from zero to 10, he got me at a good four (laughs). At least I was presentable and hopefully a little believable on camera.
GD: I mean, I think so. The tennis is really incredible and like what you were saying, too, I think everything about the film feels very authentic, and the relationship with the family, obviously, as well. I know you guys were nominated at the SAG Awards for Best Ensemble. I think people really responded to the ensemble nature of the film and especially the family, and obviously it’s not real because you are not all family, but it feels so real when you’re watching it. I think just the way everybody interacts, it feels very unique, honestly. Can you talk a little about creating those relationships between not just Will [Smith] and you, but obviously the girls as well, because I think it all just feels so authentic? I just think it’s one of the things about the film I really like.
AE: Yeah, well, that was one of the joys of this film for me is that what you saw on screen was what I was experiencing off-camera as well. I really cared about those girls. I really cared about them and when we were on set, I saw myself as their mother and they are easy to love. They had this incredible bond between them, which was evident in what was on screen, what you saw, and what you saw on screen was how they were when the cameras were off. They were constantly doing TikTok videos and talking about each other’s love lives. What you saw on screen was not far off from what was happening when the cameras weren’t rolling. And evidence of that is that sometimes Rei[naldo Marcus Green], our director, would let the cameras roll without them knowing. And some of what you saw on screen was them not being aware that the cameras were rolling, that he was just capturing who they are.
GD: Yeah, that’s amazing. I’m not surprised to hear that, honestly, because it’s so authentic that it does seem like it would have to be something like that. You have that great scene with Will, who is also incredible in the film, an Oscar nominee as well for his performance. You have that great scene in the kitchen with him, which I think is your standout moment. I know you’ve talked about it, but before that, another scene I really love is when they’re coming back, I think it’s from one of the early matches and he’s upset that they’ve been boastful in the car and kind of leaves them and drives away. I just love that scene so much and I think Oracene in that scene is so great. I think it could have been played, for a different film, maybe played for laughs or something, but it’s just a great moment, I think, and it really shows Oracene’s strength. Before we get to that scene in the kitchen, can you talk about that one and executing it so well? I just think that scene is really great. And again, kind of like I said, in a different film, I think that scene would have played differently and again, this film, I think it plays in a much more realistic fashion. I think your performance there is so great.
AE: Thank you. It was actually one of my favorite scenes in the entire movie. And the reason being is it felt, I hate to use this word, but real. It felt honest. That’s the better word. It felt honest. I know how I would feel if I was in the car and my niece and nephew had gotten out of the car to go do something and the person that was driving the car drove away, in service of teaching them a lesson. I would be horrified and infuriated. And the other thing about it is that he took a moment that should have just been so fun and so beautiful and he pissed all over it (laughs). I just gave myself permission to feel all of that, like, not put anything on it, just feel how I felt with Will doing what he was doing and I think that was why I loved it so much because I think we all were doing that. There was a situation and we had words to say, but we just were living in that van that day and having that experience.
GD: Yeah, and I think it’s a great scene too from a viewer standpoint because, again, in a different film, that is maybe not as honest about Richard and his pros and cons, let’s say, I think maybe you wouldn’t have had a character standing up to him like that. And you’re kind of filling in for the audience there as well because like you said, he’s peeing all over this great moment and leaving the kids there, just seems not great. And you giving the audience permission to be like, “Yeah, that isn’t great.” I just think that it’s a great moment. And obviously, I mentioned the scene later in the film in the kitchen. I’ve seen other interviews where you’ve talked about how you and Will didn’t really talk a lot about that before you did it. But how did you approach that scene yourself? What were your conversations? Did you have conversations, with Rei, or Zach [Baylin], the writer? How did you kind of tackle that sequence? Because again, I think that’s probably your Oscars clip, I would imagine, if they’re still doing Oscar clips with the actors. I know last year they kind of booted them off, but hopefully, they bring them back. That would be a great clip for you, but what was that like for you? How did you approach that?
AE: Yeah, we worked on that. It was the four of us, Will, Rei, Zach and me, and then Isha Price became involved, Miss Oracene’s daughter. We worked on that thing up until the moment we shot it. Because we wanted the words to be just right. For me, I think that the mark of the success of that scene, I don’t want to sound presumptuous or whatever, but that some people have asked me, “Was that scene improvised?” And I said no. Those were words that were written down on the page that we spoke. It was no improvisation in that at all. None. I mean, we would go off line a little bit and say things over and over again, that kind of thing, but those were words that we scripted, and we worked on that, as I said, up until the moment that we shot it because we wanted it to be right. For me, I thought about it in this way, I thought that here is Miss Oracene’s chance, the real Miss Oracene, and I felt that I was speaking for her that she could say what people don’t know about her and don’t care to know about her. This could be her moment for this entire country, for the whole world to hear it, because I know what my perception of her was, was that she was a doting mother, devoted mother, who was in the stands, looking cute with her shades on, cheering on her daughters. But I didn’t know and didn’t care to know that she was as instrumental in the success of her daughter’s tennis careers as she was. And so, I just thought, if I do nothing else in this film, I want to say that for her.
I know how embarrassed I was when, ultimately what I thought about her, then ultimately found out what the truth of her was, I was ashamed of myself. But a lot of times, the stories are told about us through the voices of people who don’t necessarily care about us. So I wanted to correct that in my way. I was like, “I’m talking for Miss Oracene today.” And so that’s what I brought into it. And the other part of it is, there are going to be so many more stories told about Venus and Serena. They are like Shakespearean in that way. People will always go back to this incredible story of these two sisters who were these incredible cultural and tennis icons. But how many times are people going to be told a story about their mother? And particularly while she was alive. So I really wanted to do justice by Miss Oracene, and so that’s what I tried to bring to the scene.
GD: Yeah, everything you there I totally agree with and I think that’s one of the things I really like about the film is that Oracene is given such a, I don’t know if fair shake is the right word, but you know what I mean? I think it very easily in this story could have been like the character could have been pushed aside or diminished or whatever. But obviously, it’s not. And that’s one of the things I think is so powerful and I think your performance helps bring that out as well, which is just wonderful. I know we have to wrap up here and I appreciate your time. Going back to the Oscar nomination, it sounds like just from hearing you talk about this, I could imagine this is true, but whether you win or lose or whatever happens at the Oscars, you’re always going to be an Oscar nominee. That’s an incredible honor. You’ll have that any time people write about you or in movies, I could see it on the trailer, like, “Oscar nominated,” that kind of stuff. What does it mean to have that Oscar nomination come for this performance, in this role? You’ve been working for 25 years or whatever, a very long, illustrious career in stage and screen and obviously film as well. But to have it for this role and have this recognition now, what does that mean to you? How did that make you feel like for this specific part?
AE: Yeah, I think it’s for this specific part is why. I mean, it would be great if it had happened for other things as well, sure, but it is particularly special for this because I think of myself as somebody who wants to expand how women are looked at historically. When they say cut, that’s the work I do when I’m not on camera. So imagine for me, the convergence of that, that I get to be on camera and do that kind of work and then to be rewarded for it and to be acknowledged for it. Because the way I see it, my getting this nomination feels to me like Miss Oracene is getting nominated, because she’s always been in the stands cheering for her daughters. Now, people are cheering for her, and that’s what’s so special to me.
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