Hi there, I'm Lale Arakoglu, and on today's Women Who Travel, just before the Academy Awards on Sunday,

I'm talking to actor and activist Angenu Ellis Taylor, who plays Hattie in Nickel Boys, nominated for best screenplay and best movie.

We're chatting about the roles she intentionally chooses,

about her Mississippi upbringing,

and finally, her recommendations for road trips in the South.

Angineau, welcome to the show.

You grew up in Mississippi, and just before we started taping, we were talking about getting coffee when you get to go home.

Where is home now?

Well, home is always Mississippi.

Where in Mississippi?

I'm 80 miles south of Jackson, Mississippi, and about 90 miles north of New Orleans, Louisiana.

But I'm spending most of my time in Atlanta, Georgia right now.

I'm there because my family is there.

I have a bunch of cousins, and it's a big city, you know, and it's close enough that I can get back to Mississippi pretty quickly because it's not far. It relatively...

I haven't been to Atlanta, but I think by this sounds with a nice compromise, because there's a lot going on there right now.

What I like about Atlanta, it is a place where it keeps history very much alive with King and all of these sort of freedom rights or civil rights, particularly, stalwartes.

Every streak is named after someone who is active and active in the movement.

I think people have a really terrible concept of history.

I think the way that we understand history is really unhelpful, if that makes any sense.

Like we think of history as artifact. We think of history

as this fossilized thing, right? And that's not what history is. And history is alive. And we know that

because we are essentially adjudicating things now that we thought we'd never have to deal with again.

...