“Once I started to act like my Mama, my fourth audition, I got the part,” he said.īorn in Harvey, Illinois, Ellis attended Thornridge high school, where he credited teachers with instilling in him a love of theatre. At first, he said, he was playing the role as a caricature and was told to “go back to the drawing board and figure it out”. In a 2012 TV interview in Chicago, Ellis recalled that it took four auditions for him to win the role of Lafayette. True Blood’s creator, Alan Ball, called Ellis “a singular talent whose creativity never ceased to amaze me. “Nelsan will be dearly missed by his fans and all of us at HBO.” “Nelsan was a long-time member of the HBO family whose groundbreaking portrayal of Lafayette will be remembered fondly within the overall legacy of True Blood,” the statement read. HBO released a statement saying the network was “extremely saddened” by Ellis’s death. Some fans tweeted one of his more famous scenes as Lafayette, in which the character marches out of the kitchen to confront some bigoted diners.
“My heart breaks for his kids and family,” she wrote. He also appeared in The Help, and his fellow cast member Octavia Spencer mourned his death on Instagram. in Lee Daniels’ film The Butler and as singer Bobby Byrd in the James Brown biopic Get On Up. He was also a playwright and a stage director.Įllis appeared as Martin Luther King Jr.
True blood lafayette series#
The Illinois-born actor played Lafayette, a gay short order cook, on the HBO drama from 2008 to 2014, and more recently appeared in the CBS detective series Elementary.
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