Nico Walker

When asked about his favorite foods, Nico Walker has only one answer: ice cream. During his time in prison, he could buy it at the commissary once a week, and he’d go back and forth between devouring and refusing it, even though the food served to prisoners makes many sick. “Sometimes it’s like your pride fucking with you. Because [eating ice cream] seems like some soft thing to do while you’re in prison,” he says. In 2018, Walker published Cherry, his debut novel based on (though not entirely drawn from) his own experiences enlisting as a medic in the Iraq War — he was later diagnosed with severe PTSD — and his subsequent opioid addiction and bank-robbing spree. Called the “first great novel of the opioid epidemic” by New York Magazine, it was adapted into a film this year by the Russo brothers. Walker is working on another book — “sort of a broader survey of the prison scene,” he says — and this week was in New York with his fiancée, the poet Rachel Rabbit White, where they did eat ice cream.

Nico Walker talked food at Grub Street. There’s a fundraiser for Apogee Journal and Empowerment Avenue’s collaborative project Inside Out. At The Voice of Energy, talking ambient music with Green-House. Catapult published new fiction by Kate McKean. Bright Wall/Dark Room delved into the film adaptation of Kenneth Cook’s Wake in...

It’s been a month since the release of Cherry, the big-budget adaptation of Nico Walker’s debut novel-from-life about an Iraq veteran turned heroin addict turned bank robber. Incredibly, Cherry (the book), lauded as a “miracle of literary serendipity” and “epic and exhilarating, foul and touching,” was written while Walker was in prison, corresponding with Giancarlo DiTrapano and Matthew Johnson about edits. In an interview with Jacobin, Walker [noted] that he “taught [himself] way more in prison than [he’d] ever learned in school” as a tutor for the GED program, and singled out Dostoevsky as one of his teachers:

Nico Walker is marching in circles around his house, thinking back on the time that someone tried to stab him with a pencil shank in prison. “Believe it or not, it was over algebra,” he says, elaborating that he was a GED tutor while incarcerated, teaching his fellow inmates, some of whom had short fuses. “He fuckin’ fortunately missed when he took the swipe, because he was trying to bury the motherfucker in me.”

The Russo brothers’ first post-Avengers cinematic foray, Cherry, is finally here. Starring Tom Holland in the lead role, the film tells the story of a broken-hearted young man who joins the army, returns from Afghanistan with PTSD, turns to heroin to cope, and then subsequently starts robbing banks to support his habit.

A former Clevelander’s story of war, drug addiction and bank robbery hits the big screen today. The box office-smashing Russo brothers turned Nico Walker’s bestselling book into the film “Cherry,” which is scheduled to start streaming on Apple TV+ on March 12. Set and filmed in Cleveland, it’s based loosely on Walker’s experience as an Iraq War vet.

The movie adaptation of Nico Walker’s Cherry—the best-selling debut novel about an Iraq veteran turned heroin addict turned bank robber—will be released in theaters in two days, directed by the Russo Brothers (who you might know from Avengers) and starring Tom Holland (who you might know from Avengers). The auction for the film rights was hotly contested; the Russo Brothers’ production company beat out Warner Bros (with James Franco directing) and Sony. So one might expect that Walker picked the deal that most gelled with his artistic vision, right?

The author behind one of Tom Holland ’s next movie roles has cast his verdict on the film adaptation. Nico Walker’s Cherry , a semi-autobiographical novel about an army veteran who becomes addicted to opioids after returning home from Iraq, has been turned into a film by Avengers directors Anthony and Joe Russo.

Tom Holland’s Nico Walker is Shady in New Cherry Clip. Apple TV+ has released a brand new clip from the Russo Brothers’ upcoming crime drama film Cherry, teasing the beginning of the love story between Tom Holland’s Nico Walker and Ciara Bravo’s Emily. The movie will arrive in select theaters on February 26, 2021, and globally on Apple TV+ on Friday, March 12, 2021. Check out the new video in the player below!