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Behind every great man, as the old, outdated expression goes, there’s a great woman — and there’s a pretty decent chance she’s been played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.

The 55-year-old actress has built a long, inspiring career out of portraying characters who linger just off center stage: the long-suffering wife of Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Navy Seal in 2000’s Men of Honor; Ray Charles’ mistress in Jamie Foxx’s 2004 biopic Ray; Yusef Salaam’s mother in 2019’s When They See Us (her first Emmy nomination); and Venus and Serena Williams’ mom in the 2021 Will Smith film about their dad, King Richard (her first Oscar nom).

“If we only know the figurehead and we don’t know the women who were doing the groundwork, it’s not the full truth,” she tells THR. “We’d be telling a half story.”

She fills in the other half once again in the just-released Nickel Boys,...

Scott Mescudi made it out of M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap just in time to land his next role. The actor and "Pursuit Of Happiness" rapper will next appear in Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore sequel, alongside Julie Bowen, Christopher McDonald, and Sandler himself. All three actors are reprising their...

Exclusive: Academy Award nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (King Richard) and Rachelle Lefevre (Twilight franchise) have wrapped on Liz Here Now, a new indie drama from director Sterling Macer Jr.

Shot in Lexington, Ky, the film is based on the novel of the same name by Todd Connor. The story follows Liz Baxter (Ellis-Taylor), who works as a nanny for a prominent, white family in Oakland, California during the rise of the Black Panther Party in 1967. When Liz discovers that the Connor children are suffering under the hand of their mother, Jane (Lefevre), and attempts to step in to protect the children, she’s accused of participating in a Black Panther conspiracy.

In a statement on the project, Macer Jr. told Deadline, “Our approach to Liz Here Now is a kind of deconstruction of the black maid’s story, and to a degree, bends the genre of the civil rights era domestic drama,...