Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor Put Everything Into ‘Origin.’ She Hopes It Wasn’t in Vain

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor still feels caught in the whirlwind of Origin. She went out on a limb to score the lead role in the production that started less than a year ago, and only months later made a splashy bow in Venice. “It feels like something I don’t want to let go,” she tells me. “It feels so fast.”

There’s a deep connection Ellis-Taylor communicates about the film, and particularly the role of Isabel Wilkerson, an author and scholar whose provocative and profound ideas about class and stratification in global history make up the book Caste. Director Ava DuVernay took her ambitious theories and decided to make a movie out of them, both by dramatizing her central areas of inquiry—taking the production from the contemporary U.S. to Nazi Germany to India—and by turning the focus on Wilkerson herself, paralleling her personal journey with her brilliant investigative work. Ellis-Taylor herself had already been a big fan of the Pulitzer Prize-winner’s work. In Origin, she embodies a woman asking huge questions about humanity while experiencing incredible personal loss—a nuanced character arc that DuVernay weaves into the fabric of her emotional cinematic epic.

Ellis-Taylor has experienced a swift rise in Hollywood after years of “toiling in oblivion,” as she put it to me years ago. Last year, she earned her first Oscar nomination for stealing scenes in King Richard, and this is now the richest lead role of her screen career, and she makes good on it with a performance of astounding vulnerability and intellectual prowess. Frustratingly, she and the film, which was acquired out of Venice by Neon, have been struggling for a place in this year’s awards conversation, despite strong reviews and audience response out of festivals. Ellis-Taylor has taken it upon herself to get the word out during Oscar nominations voting (which ends Tuesday) and ahead of the movie’s January 19 theatrical release. Her ultimate hope is that Origin is simply seen.

“My prayer for this film is that it won’t be in vain,” she says of the work to get here. “I know that it will continue to be a grassroots thing, and honestly, I’m not mad about that. I wish we had millions of dollars, so our billboards could be everywhere—it would just make it certainly easier for us—but going to the people, getting the folks involved in it, feels consistent with the spirit of the book.”

In conversation with Vanity Fair, Ellis-Taylor breaks down one of the most complex and fascinating figures she’s ever portrayed.

Vanity Fair: Last time you and I spoke, you’d mentioned the lengths you went to, to get this part, in sending Ava pictures of yourself and Isabel Wilkerson side by side. Can you tell me that story and how you so quickly saw yourself in this woman, this character?

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor: Yeah, I did it. [Laughs] When I knew that there was a conversation about actually making the film, I said, “I want to be in that conversation, I want to be a part of that.” I started looking at her and I said to myself, “If I did the right things, I could make myself look like her.” She has a sort of iconic look. She has pearls, she wears this burgundy sheath dress. I said to my sister, “We’re going to make me look like that.” So we ordered a dress from Nordstrom’s or Bloomingdale’s, I can’t remember which; I got the right makeup at the beauty supply place in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and got me a nice wig. My sister ordered me some pearls from Amazon because Ms. Wilkerson wears pearls often. And I had her take a picture of me, and we sent it to Aisha Coley, who was the casting director for the film.