King Richard star Aunjanue Ellis on fighting for Queen Oracene's voice to be heard

Forget about her excitement to be in the awards conversation: Aunjanue Ellis is thrilled just to be having a conversation. "This could be a very lonely time when nobody wants to talk to me," kids the King Richard star, 52. Instead, she's coming off a win for Best Supporting Actress from the National Board of Review and several more nominations for her portrayal of Oracene Williams (now Oracene Price), the mother of tennis icons Venus and Serena Williams.

This kind of attention might be old hat for her onscreen husband, Will Smith, but Ellis is soaking up every minute of it, including her first late night-show appearance (on Jimmy Kimmel Live!). "Winning things? I'm not that used to that, so it's rarefied air for me," admits Ellis, who, despite being featured in past Oscar winners like Ray, The Help, and If Beale Street Could Talk, has yet to earn her own nomination. Still, her turn in King Richard is special — she feels it. "It's because I've done something I feel good about, and that's because it's making people feel good."

Well before feeling the warm embrace of audiences, Ellis needed the King Richard team to feel good about her — a process that took weeks. "I immediately wanted to play the mother of Venus and Serena Williams," she says of Oracene, the steady rock of the famous family. "I had to convince them to put me in this movie, but thankfully I got them to believe."

Smith's performance as the undeterred and controversial Richard Williams — who began making headlines over the handling of his daughters' careers when they were preteens — is a showstopper. But Ellis, Smith, screenwriter Zach Baylin, and director Reinaldo Marcus Green all wanted to ensure that Oracene got her due as well, and that not all of Richard's questionable behavior was validated. Much of this comes during a quietly electric scene in the Williams' Florida kitchen when tensions boil over between husband and wife, and Oracene makes her voice heard. It's one of those moments that screams: For Your Consideration.

"We were working on the scene up until that morning," Ellis recalls. "I didn't want this to be one of those scenes in these male-hero movies where they have that confrontation, and the woman is like, 'I have suffered so long and this is how you've failed me.' What's absent in those scenes is you don't find out anything about her. We were trying to work toward the honesty that they were equal partners. The difference is she didn't crave the limelight in the way that he did. There will be so many more stories told about Venus and Serena, but how many other times are we going to get to hear Ms. Oracene speak her truth? That's what we were fighting for."

Ellis went into the fight armed with audio from interviews conducted with Oracene by Smith and Green, as well as the on-set presence of producer Isha Price, Oracene's daughter. But now she's received word directly from the queen: "I finally met Ms. Oracene a couple weeks ago, and she said, 'Great job.' I knew I wasn't going to get a lot, but I was thankful."

Once again, just the conversation is enough.

A version of this story appears in the February issue of Entertainment Weekly, on newsstands Friday and available to order here. Don't forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

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