“It’s so funny because we said that, and it’s really the truth, but I feel like it definitely sounds like we’re crazy,” Herris adds with a laugh.
For Herries, his preparation was about “connecting” with Elwood. He discovered that his entry point was “the love he grew up with, which informed everything about him – all the things you like that make him a great kid.” Meanwhile, Wilson pointed to one line in Ross and Jocelyn Barnes’ screenplay in which Turner says he knew his mother loved him: “She liked liquor better.”
“At the same time he expresses his loneliness and abandonment, but he still remembers some love in those moments,” Wilson explains. “He kind of revealed his pain.”
Despite the difficulty of the material, the group was full of joy. The counselor was present during some of the most intense scenes of violence, but was also available on the colder days. “She was always there to talk and hang out,” Herries says. “You can feel it with everyone on set, so I think that’s how we manage to get through it even though what we’re dealing with is very sensitive.”
But the experience of watching the finished film was very different from the experience of filming it for both men. Only then did the weight of what they had accomplished sink in. Wilson saw that Nickel Boys For the first time alone in the screening room. It was physically exhausting and emotionally overwhelming.
“There’s something about the first viewing, I felt so tired afterward, but I think that’s because of the experience of the film, and not in a bad way at all,” he says. “I didn’t expect to be affected this way. Ethan and I talk about this, like, lower stomach — for some reason, our hands go there when we talk about that experience.”
Heres, even though he wasn’t alone, felt the same.
“I didn’t know myself when I saw myself on screen,” he recalls. “That call didn’t happen.” He couldn’t see Wilson either. When the credits finally rolled, he returned to his body.
“Suddenly, when I realized I had just seen our names, I started crying because that was the moment I realised, Oh, that was our movie. This is what we did. That was us“.
