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Hello and welcome to Little Gold Men, the award season podcast from Vanity Fair.

I am delighted and proud to introduce him as Academy Award winner.

And the Oscar goes to.

And the Oscar goes to the winner, it's a tie.

And any little girl who's practicing their speech on the teller, you never know.

Mom, I just want an Oscar.

I'm David Canfield, and my guest today is Anjanoe Ellis Taylor, who stars in Nickel Boys.

You've heard me talk a lot about this film.

It's based on Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which tells the harrowing story of two black boys who are sent to an abusive reformatory school in Jim Crow era, Florida.

Nickel Boys is directed by visionary filmmaker Rommel Ross, who received an Oscar nomination for his documentary, Hale County, this morning, this evening. And he brings the same innovative filmmaking techniques to this film.

It is shot first-person point of view, meaning you often see the actors looking direct to camera as they address other characters in the film.

And that includes Anjanoe, who plays Hattie, the main character,

Elwood's grandmother. Haddy's put in a kind of desperate position as she struggles to get

Elwood out of the school that he's been sent to. It's a heartbreaking performance that

speaks to her strengths as a performer and also the strength of the filmmaking format. In our conversation,

she talks about the challenges of that format and acting

direct to camera, her thoughts on critics who've called the film difficult to watch, and she reflects

...