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America’s most polarizing boyfriend from HBO’s “Insecure” is pushing his limits to become an action star.If only he could keep his lunch under control.
It’s not the smile of his insecure character Lawrence Walker after he accidentally confuses him into a trio.Here’s the smile of a man who’s been in a jet for hours, flying so fast that gravity has made him seven times his weight, while he returns lines as a fighter pilot, it’s him in an action movie the first role.
“As hard as it was, [Jay] had a great time and cherished every moment,” said Maverick director Joseph Kosinski.Filming was so physically demanding that some of Ellis’ co-stars were throwing up, with Kosinski proclaiming, “I don’t know if anyone else would make another film like this.”
Ellis couldn’t be happier.”I like being uncomfortable. There’s a lot of growth there,” the 40-year-old said.”I like to explore, and that’s what acting means to me. I can explore myself and parts of myself that I didn’t know existed.”
Smiling (probably) doesn’t suggest Ellis is a masochist – he’s just always comfortable with the unknown.Born in Sumter, South Carolina, Wendell Ramone Ellis Jr. moved frequently because of his father’s job in the Air Force, attending 12 schools in 13 years.To find solace in the constant change, Ellis said, he created a fictional friend, Mickey, “who helped me make sense of the world.” (More on him later.)
On his breakthrough show “Insecure,” he learned to play a character who lived a life that didn’t fit him.Lawrence is frustrated, rejected, and vulnerable, which scares Ellis.”I was afraid to play Lawrence. I didn’t want to be vulnerable; I didn’t grow up that way. But it brought something to me as an actor. It allowed me to expand and grow.”
Insecure growth means rethinking masculinity.Written by Issa Rae and based on the friendship of two black women — Molly Carter (Yvonne Orji) and Issa Dee (Issa Rae) — the sometimes insecure script-reading lessons convince Ellis of his unique experience as a man Told him everything the men wanted, just to have a group of women who had worked with men and educated him from a different angle.He’s also introduced to a new type of friendship between men through his character’s close friendship with the unfiltered, brutal Chad Kerr (Neal Brown Jr.).Lawrence and Chad take care of each other’s emotional health after a breakup, career change, and an unexpected chlamydia flare-up, which turns into a real-life friendship between Ellis and Brown Jr., shattering the stigma he once held that male relationships should allow themselves to have each other.
“I’m checking in with my people more and saying, ‘I love you.’ I’m not afraid to say, ‘Yo, bro, I love you. I hope you’re well. I want you to be happy. It’s happening in your life. What? I think those of us, for the most part, know that there shouldn’t be any love between men. We don’t know how to show love to other men. We’re not taught.”
Top Gun’s growth means his limit stops where the F-18 fighter taxiway he’s on begins, and then it glides between snowy peaks so close that “it feels like your wingtips are about to hit a tree” and like Inside, you unscrew a 32,000-pound blender.
In order to do what he has never done before, he has to train like never before.Through 45 hours of flight training, the actor went from learning the basics to sitting behind veteran Top Gun pilot Wash Job, tumbling through the air while trying to keep blood in his brain and lunch in his stomach.”I’m 6-foot-4, 215 pounds and played college basketball,” Ellis said.”I’m excited that I can use my body and my body in a way that I don’t have to be in contact with the rest of my work.”
Before each day’s shooting, Kosinski had Ellis and his pilots practice various aspects of the scenes they shot hundreds of times in a wooden cockpit model called a stag, because once they were in the sky, They would be unable to communicate with the crew following.”You’re telling the pilot, ‘I need the sun at six o’clock.’ You’re also telling the pilot where to place the plane and what maneuvers we need to do to shoot the movie,” Ellis said.”In some scenes, many of my actors and I were literally pulling 7 g’s in the back seat of the F-18, the camera was rolling, and we were acting through it.” Kosinski estimates that the actors are in the sky every day Only one minute of usable footage is produced for every 60 to 70 minutes of a performance.
Working with Tom Cruise is like a kind of actor boot camp.He remembers Cruise teaching him the importance of paying attention to camera movement while acting to make sure the audience locks in to everything you do.Ellis said the lesson was “one of the things I learned on Season 4 of Insecure and Mrs. America,” the FX miniseries about the difficulties of ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment.But most importantly, Cruise made Ellis feel like he belonged to him.”Tom was clear: ‘You guys are movie stars, you guys are action stars. I can show you how I did that and built it up in my career.’”
When the cameras aren’t rolling, Ellis’ natural chemistry with co-star Glen Powell is so undeniable that Cruise, Kosinski and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie urged the two to make a movie together.In the fall of 2019, a few months after Ellis finished filming “The Maverick,” Netflix acquired the duo’s action comedy about a pair of eccentric rival Secret Service agents teaming up to rescue the president’s kidnapped son.The film will further Ellis’s intentions to increase diversity in Hollywood.He grew up on films like Die Hard and Passenger 57, where ordinary people anyone can relate to can be turned into action heroes.”When I think about those late ’90s and early 2000s movies, we had a lot of different representations of men and people of color. We don’t get it today.”
Ellis has gained wider representation through Black Bar Mitzvah (BBM), the production company he founded with friend Aaron Bergman in 2018.At the core of Ellis, he says he’s a story creator, like Kerry Washington, Reese Witherspoon, and other producers, he’s started his own company, investing in what he wants to see Various stories.BBM has people like Rae and Jesse Williams read the work of formerly incarcerated writers on its podcast, Written Off.
Growing into the role of a producer is not an easy task.As an actor, Ellis is used to coming to the set just to understand his lines, while the team does the heavy lifting of casting, financing and making sure the production runs smoothly.Now, he’s in charge of all of that, while taking on the added responsibility of finding little-known stories from creators that Hollywood turns a blind eye to.The disturbing truth about doing what few people do is that it can often be done by very few people.
“They’re also not represented. Sometimes, in terms of representation, they’re often forgotten. It’s a challenge to find people and stories that aren’t the stories you usually see every day.”
In a way, BBM fulfilled Ellis’ childhood dream of creating the stories he needed to understand the world with his imaginary friend Mikey.He also published his first book about the friend and the lessons he learned as a child.But no matter what he does, he will always be an actor first because he likes to be uncomfortable in the name of growing up.
“I like to be miserable when my alarm goes off at 4:30 in the morning because by the time I get to my chair on set at 5:30, I already have a big smile on my face.”