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When the Academy Awards air on Sunday, March 2, an actor cast in his first film role will be paying close attention to the double Oscar nominee, “Nickel Boys.” Southern Illinois University Edwardsville alumnus Trey Perkins (‘24) plays Chickie Pete in the feature, directed by RaMell Ross, nominated for both best picture and best adapted screenplay. Perkins says working on this project “was an amazing experience. This was my acting debut for real.”

Perkins was born on an Air Force base in Nebraska but grew up in Belleville. While at SIUE he majored in theatre and dance and during his first two years he simultaneously attended online acting classes at LS Acting Studios. It was through participating in one of the Studios showcases in Los Angeles that he was seen by an agent who called with an interest to sign him the following day. The agent eventually requested that Perkins, who was now a client, produce a self-tape audition for a new film going into production titled “Nickel Boys.” Perkins auditioned for the lead character of Elwood Curtis, but received a callback for the role of Chickie Pete.

“Then my agent called during my birthday week and asked, ‘How do you feel about working for Brad Pitt? You’re in the movie!’” Pitt’s Plan B is one of the production companies executive producing the film.

Perkins was due on set the next day to film three to four weeks at several locations in Louisiana, including Ponchatoula and New Orleans. The film, and the Pulitzer Prize winning novel “The Nickel Boys” by Colson Whitehead on which the film is based, tells the story of a Black teenage boy who is wrongfully sentenced to Nickel Academy, a reform school for boys. The facility harbors a culture of abuse. This fictional story actually exposes real life incidents between the years of 1940 and 1975 at Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida’s panhandle.

“It was a lot of late nights,” said Perkins. He added that when working with “the boys” he felt a little nervous, especially when he had scenes with Daveed Diggs (“Blindspotting,” “Black-ish,” “Hamilton”).

“I was just so nervous. Here goes little ol’ me acting with him. But he’s a really cool dude, he really is. He’s just a really cool person.”

Perkins’ break in his school schedule to pursue an acting career came during the fall semester of his third year, when he was also working as a resident assistant. Upon his return, he faced the reality of having to catch up on all of his classes. In this scenario, he did not foresee a Hollywood ending.

“At that point, I felt like I had hit rock bottom. So I literally made the executive decision to drop out my spring semester of my junior year,” said Perkins. “I took that whole spring semester to basically just focus on myself, focus on still doing the acting classes, focus on whatever I needed to do to grow. And then after that, I went back to school in the summer and changed some things about my major.”

Thanks to “a lot of communication with my professors,” Perkins said, he ended up graduating within a four-year period. Even better, “I managed to graduate with all straight A’s and I was on the Dean’s List (2024) too.”

He added, “I'm just blessed to have professors and mentors who are just so supportive of me throughout my journey, such as Professor Katherine Bentley, Professor Geo Jones and Professor Charles Harper. Everybody on the faculty—they all were really supportive of me, because I kept in close communication with them. They said, ‘This is what we are training you to do: To act not only on stage, but to act in film and television.’”

When asked how he would describe the film, Perkins replied, “I would say it is a tear-jerker, for sure—especially when you get to the ending. A lot of people would say that it is another ‘Black trauma film,’ and to an extent, yes. However, I feel this film is very historical, because it touched pieces of Black history that we never talk about...ever.”

The majority of Perkins’ scenes were filmed at a convent, transformed into the reform school set during an era of Jim Crow. Perkins recalled one of the many challenges of a period piece: “I had to take my hearing aids out.”

Born deaf, Perkins received hearing aids when only a couple of weeks old. Today he has moderate hearing loss in one ear, severe hearing loss in the other ear. “My mom told me about the experience when I got my first pair of hearing aids. She just said my eyes got really big and wide when I first heard her voice talking to me. I was like, really? She's like, ‘Yeah!’”

During Perkins’ scenes with a potential close ups from the camera, members of the film crew were ready with his hearing aid case. “They would hold it and keep it safe for me while filming. And then they would also give me some different cues on set, like a vocal cue. They needed to say the vocal cue loud enough for me to hear. Or they would give signals. I know we were filming a scene one time in the dormitory area, and I had to pay attention. I had to look at a certain production assistant and she would cue, ‘Okay, go!’ and that's when I’d do whatever I needed to do in that scene.”

“Everybody was just so supportive. I felt calm. I felt at peace while filming.”

Perkins noted that the director, Ross, may have felt what was even more challenging for the character Chickie Pete and the actor inhabiting the role were the scenes of sexual abuse.

“There were some moments on set where I know that he was very protective of me. Because there was this one scene where we cut the taping, and he just asked me, ‘Are you okay? Are you? Are you? Do you need to step away from him for a minute or something?’ And I was like, 'Oh, no, I'm fine.'”

Perkins credits strategies learned in classes with SIUE’s Tress Kurzym, BFA, program coordinator of Theater Education, for scenes involving intimate contact.

“She's an intimacy coordinator,” said Perkins of Kurzym. “She would always be there for us when it comes to intimacy for shows, or intimacy in classes. And what she taught us was to always make sure that we have a safe word. It doesn't matter what that word is. It has to be a safe word, because with all the lines in the script, sometimes it requires the person to say, ‘No. Stop. Don't do this to me,’ and it's all part of the script. So, for the other partner, in their mind, they're thinking, ‘Okay, this is a part of the script. This is a part of what we’re rehearsing.’ But if the actor is actually feeling some type of PTSD from something that they went through, or they’re really, really scared, or they don't want to go through with it anymore, it's always safe to have a safe word.”

Perkins said a counselor was also on set “not just for actors, but to make sure everybody who was participating in filming was okay.” He also reminded himself in playing the role, that the actions were not real—a tip he also remembered from class exercises with Kurzym. 

Post-graduation, Perkins is now in media training with his mother who is currently pursuing her master’s in public relations. Perkins and his family plan on watching the Academy Awards broadcast together to cheer on his Nickel Boys family.

As for what comes next, Perkins said, “I’m staying consistent with classes. I'm still auditioning, because it's a very competitive field. And so, I have to be patient. I'm definitely being patient, knowing that the right door will open no matter what. I can feel it. But all in all, I'm just living life, figuring out who I am as a person and, yeah, just riding the wave.” 

 
PHOTOS:  Trey Perkins; Actor Daveed Diggs and Trey Perkins; Perkins in SIUE's Black Theater Workshop production "Legacy"; Perkins and “Nickel Boys” cast members; Perkins on set of “Nickel Boys”; Perkins and “Nickel Boys” cast members