Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens is stepping down from his role as head of the agency – telling Fox News that his agents have given 100% in difficult conditions, including some of the worst conditions he’s seen in his entire career.

Owens, who was promoted to Border Patrol Chief in 2023, is retiring in April. Texas Border Czar Mike Banks will be tapped to be the next chief. 

Owens spoke to Fox News about his time as chief during some of the most intense moments of the crisis at the southern border. He said it was "bittersweet" because it is the end of a chapter in his life.

TOP BORDER LAWMAKER PUSHES TO DECLARE BLOODTHIRSTY GANG A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION: ‘TAKE THE GLOVES OFF’ 

"But at the same time, it's a happy one because I feel like I made my difference, and it's time to hand it off to the next generation."

Fox asked him about the surge in border crossings his men and women dealt with – including the surge in 2021 in Del Rio and overwhelming numbers at Eagle Pass, Texas. 

"I hadn't seen anything like that. And it's that was as bad as I had seen it in my entire career. And at every moment, the men and women are trying to find a way to take care of that so that they could get back out there on patrol and keep the bad actors from coming in," he said.

He described how Border Patrol agents would go from performing CPR on babies to going after a gang member or convicted felon.

"That takes a toll on anybody. And what I saw was those men and women deal with that not just once in a while, but daily and every single day. No matter how frustrated they got, they get up the next morning, they put that uniform on and they went out there and they give 100%. I owed them 100% as well," he said.

As for Banks, Owens said he considers him a friend and said that he is "confident and optimistic about our future with him at the helm."

"He loves the Border Patrol just like I do. And he's going to keep his focus on the mission of keeping this country safe from harm," he said.

Owens also said he has "never seen a situation where I would say the border is secure."

CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF THE BORDER SECURITY CRISIS

"Because for me, a secure border means if something bad tries to come into this country, I'm going to be able to detect it and stop it. There's too many gaps and vulnerabilities today that still exist on our border," he said.

Outgoing DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas praised Owens in a statement, saying he "embodies the ethos of the United States Border Patrol – ‘Honor First.’ 

"Chief Owens has dedicated his life to public service. Throughout his career in the Border Patrol – from his first assignment at Calexico Station to his command of the elite BORTAC unit in El Paso, from his leadership of the USBP Academy to the Laredo Sector, Del Rio Sector, Washington, D.C., and many duty stations in-between – he has always stepped up and stepped in whenever the challenges have been greatest, and wherever his talents have been most needed. He rose through the ranks of the Border Patrol by virtue of his extraordinary leadership and his bravery, integrity, and decency," he said.

"It is these qualities that made Chief Owens the best and right person to lead the Border Patrol during an intensely difficult time. I am grateful that he accepted the challenge, just as he has accepted so many others throughout his distinguished law enforcement career. The Border Patrol, and the Department of Homeland Security, are stronger today because of Chief Owens," he said.

The announcement comes days before President-elect Trump will take office, and is expected to launch a mass deportation operation as well as renewed efforts to ramp up border security. On Friday, Kristi Noem, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security, faced her confirmation hearing. 

During that hearing, she also pledged to secure the border, including promising to end the use of the CBP One app and related parole programs introduced by the Biden administration.

• The Biden administration will leave it to Trump to enforce the TikTok ban.
• Congress ruled last year that Chinese firm ByteDance should sell TikTok or see it banned.
• Trump takes office on January 20, the day after the deadline for ByteDance to sell.

President Joe Biden's administration is not planning to implement the TikTok ban set to take effect on Sunday.

That would leave it to President-elect Donald Trump and his officials to act after they take office on January 20.

The law, which was passed by Congress and signed by Biden in April of last year, requires TikTok to be banned unless ByteDance, its China-based parent company, sells the app's US operations by January 19.

"Given the sheer fact of timing, this Administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration, which takes office on Monday," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

"President Biden's position on TikTok has been clear for months, including since Congress sent a bill in overwhelming, bipartisan fashion to the President's desk: TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in developing this law," she added.

The bill that would ban TikTok from US app stores also gave Biden the ability to grant ByteDance a 90-day extension if several conditions were met, including if there was "evidence of significant progress" made toward selling TikTok's US operations.

Trump has defended the app, which was banned amid concerns user data could be accessed by the Chinese government.

Mike Waltz, Trump's incoming national security advisor, told Fox News on Wednesday that Trump would seek to preserve the app, used by around 170 million Americans.

"We're going to find a way to preserve it but protect people's data. And that's the deal that will be in front of us," Waltz said.

He suggested an executive order could be used to protect it, but offered few details on how this might work in practice.

Last month, Trump called on the US Supreme Court to pause the ban. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the ban on Friday.

Following the ruling, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew posted a video to TikTok thanking Trump for his commitment to working with TikTok to keep the app running in the US. 

There have been several potential TikTok buyers, but it's unclear if or to what extent ByteDance has sought to divest. ByteDance and TikTok have not publicly shown any interest in a sale.

Democratic former Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday that more time was needed to find a US buyer.

"It's clear that more time is needed to find an American buyer and not disrupt the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans, of so many influencers who have built up a good network of followers," Schumer said.

It's also unclear what will happen to the app on Sunday if Biden, Trump, or the Supreme Court do not step in before then to save it.

The legislation passed last year requires platforms in the US such as Apple or Google to stop offering the app or updating it when the sale deadline passes, meaning it'd effectively "go dark" or be unavailable.

• Democrats may need to help Republicans raise the debt ceiling this year.
• If that happens, Democrats aren't going to do it for free. They'll likely demand concessions.
• Rep. Ro Khanna, a Silicon Valley Democrat, says his party should demand a federal minimum wage hike.

At some point in the next few months, Congress will have to raise the debt ceiling.

For now, Republicans are planning to do it on their own. But if past is prologue, they'll probably need votes from across the aisle — and Democrats are likely to demand something in return.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat who represents Silicon Valley, told Business Insider this week that he believes the price should be an increase in the federal minimum wage.

"We should force Republicans to vote on it," the California Democrat told BI.

Khanna did not specify a particular level at which he'd like to raise the wage, but Democrats generally support a $15 per hour federal minimum wage. Some, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, have proposed pushing it even higher, to $17 per hour.

President-elect Donald Trump said in December that he would "consider" raising the minimum wage, but several Republican lawmakers later told BI that they opposed the idea.

Scott Bessent, Trump's nominee for secretary of the treasury, said at a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday that he does not believe the current $7.25 per hour federal minimum wage should change.

It's not clear if Democrats will follow Khanna's lead, though he told BI that he would "make the case to the caucus."

Minimum wage increases tend to be popular among both Democratic and Republican voters — in November, several Republican-leaning states passed minimum wage hikes via ballot measures.

Democrats still have to figure out their price for helping Republicans

As of now, Republicans want to avoid handing any leverage to Democrats in the first few months of Trump's presidency. They plan to include a debt ceiling hike in a broader party-line "reconciliation" bill containing a smattering of Trump's priorities on energy, immigration, border security, and taxes.

But there's a good chance that won't work, given some hardline Republicans' deep reservations about raising the debt ceiling without dramatic spending cuts. Some Republicans have never voted to raise the debt ceiling before, and in December, dozens of them openly defied Trump's call to raise the debt ceiling after Elon Musk helped tank a government funding bill.

If Republicans can't do it themselves, Democrats will have the chance to make demands, lest the country breach the debt ceiling and trigger a fiscal crisis.

"I'm not a cheap date," Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts told BI. "The idea that we're just going to help them out when they can't get their own members to cooperate, those days are gone."

Of the several House Democrats that BI spoke to, only Khanna was willing to name a specific price. Others demurred, saying they were waiting to see what negotiations would look like in the coming months, and underscoring that Democrats would have to decide on their approach collectively.

"The sentiment from our caucus is: If you need our help on anything, you're going to have to help us," Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told BI. "All of this, I think, is subject to many of our internal conversations."

Democrats could also use their leverage to try to halt the deep cuts to federal government spending that Republicans may pursue in the coming months, rather than making an affirmative policy demand.

"There's clearly a whole host of things that I think the caucus would have as priorities," Democratic Rep. Joe Morelle of New York told BI.

• AMC's "Breaking Bad" ended over 10 years ago, but its popularity and impact endure.
• The show's iconic characters resulted in spinoffs, and it still has an enthusiastic fan base.
• From a character's brush with death to flying pizzas, here are some surprising "Breaking Bad" facts.

When "Breaking Bad" debuted in 2008 on AMC, the gritty drama stunned viewers, especially those who knew Bryan Cranston as the goofy father from "Malcolm in the Middle." His chemistry-teacher-turned-meth-maker character, Walter White, became increasingly ruthless as the series continued. 

That wasn't the show's only surprise. Gruesome deaths, twisty plots, and memorable characters all made the show iconic, a legacy that continues over a decade after its end. "Better Call Saul" and a movie, "El Camino," followed, continuing the interest and accolades for "Breaking Bad." 

Here are some fun facts about "Breaking Bad" you may not have known. 

The show was originally set in California instead of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the show used the stark, lonesome desert as the perfect place for hiding secrets — and stacks of cash. That wasn't always the plan, though. 

In a 2010 interview with Slant magazine, Vince Gilligan, the show's creator, said he had originally planned for "Breaking Bad" to be set in Riverside, California.

Then Sony approached him with the idea of moving it to New Mexico because of financial incentives. The state offered tax credits for film and television production, Gilligan said.

They chose to film the show there "for strictly financial reasons," he added.

However, the city's proximity to the Mexico border ended up influencing storylines in later seasons. "I feel like I got very lucky that we wound up there, although it was not originally my decision," Gilligan said. 

"Breaking Bad" boosted Albuquerque's economy and tourism business.

It wasn't just the plot that benefited from setting the show in New Mexico. Albuquerque saw a spike in visitors eager to explore Walter White's haunts. 

The show's now-famous shooting locations continue to be a major draw for tourists from all over the world. Local souvenir shops sell "blue meth" rock candy, "Breaking Bad" t-shirts, and much more. 

A website listing every known filming location in Albuquerque makes it easy for travelers to plan their "Breaking Bad" sightseeing trips.

Top sites include Walter White's house; Saul's office; and Twisters, the restaurant that served as the set for villain Gustavo Fring's Los Pollos Hermanos.  

The real-life house that Walter White lived in is for sale, but the new owners might have to deal with nosy fans.

The filming location for Walter White's house in "Breaking Bad" became a must-see for tourists. For the occupants, the sensation around their modest three-bedroom home became so frustrating that they recently put it up for sale for $4 million. 

For years, the family dealt with tourists taking rocks from the yard or tossing pizzas on the roof, just like Walter White did in a now-iconic scene from the show. 

The owners hope whoever buys the house will embrace the show and its enthusiastic visitors. "I hope they make it what the fans want," owner Joanna Quintana told KOB4, a local NBC affiliate, earlier this month. "They want a B&B. They want a museum. They want access to it. Go for it." 

The iconic shot of Walter White tossing the pizza on the roof of his house was shot in a single take.

During the second season of "Breaking Bad," Walter White famously threw a pizza onto the roof of his home.

While the production team had set aside hours to get the shot, Cranston did it in a single take, he said in a 2012 interview on "Jimmy Kimmel Live."

When fans saw an unsliced pizza swirl into the air and land perfectly on the roof, they wondered what pizza place sells uncut pizza.

In a 2017 Reddit AMA, Gilligan explained that he and the production team knew eagle-eyed fans would catch this, so they added a scene to explain the situation. 

Badger and Skinny Pete show up at Jesse's apartment with a pile of unsliced pizzas. "That's the gimmick," Badger said. "They don't cut the pizza, and they pass the savings on to you."

The DEA consulted on the show, and Cranston shadowed a chemistry professor to get the lingo right.

The show reached out to the US Drug Enforcement Agency to get their input on the show. "But they saw that it might be in their best interest to make sure that we do it correctly," Cranston told High Times in 2012. "So DEA chemists came on board as consultants and taught Aaron Paul and me how to make crystal meth." 

To become even more familiar with the science, Cranston met with the head of the University of Southern California chemistry department. The professor let the actor know they were using some equipment incorrectly, and Gilligan made the changes.

However, the show won't accurately teach you how to make meth.

Walt and Jesse are shown throughout the series making methamphetamine in great detail. However, it's not exactly a step-by-step recipe for viewers.  

In a 2011 interview with NPR, Donna Nelson, an organic chemist and a science advisor to the show, said they eliminated key elements from the process to keep people from attempting to make meth at home. 

"That was actually one of the concerns of a lot of people, but Vince Gilligan has been very clever," Nelson said. "If you just simply followed the one synthesis as it's presented, you wouldn't come out with methamphetamine."

 

 

The bathtub scene didn't pass the "Mythbusters'" tests.

In one of the first season's most memorable scenes, Walt and Jesse used hydrofluoric acid to dissolve a body in a bathtub. In addition to dissolving the body, the acid ate through the tub and ceiling, cascading a massive, disgusting, gloopy mess onto the first floor. 

"Mythbusters" tested the method on pig flesh in 2013. Although hydrofluoric acid broke down the tissue, it didn't liquify it as thoroughly as the episode showed.

Meanwhile, the bathtub and drywall were relatively unaffected by the acid in the "Mythbusters" demonstration. 

Bryan Cranston was not the first choice for the role of Walter White.

Initially, executives offered the role of Walter White to actors Matthew Broderick and John Cusack, The Hollywood Reporter reported in 2012.

Both declined, much to the dismay of executives at AMC and Sony Pictures Television who couldn't get past Cranston's history of comedic roles. 

Gilligan pushed for casting Cranston as the antihero because he had witnessed the actor's range in an episode of "The X-Files." The role was very different from Cranston's work on "Malcolm in the Middle" and "Seinfeld," and his performance left a positive impression on Gilligan. 

"We needed somebody who could be dramatic and scary yet have an underlying humanity so when he dies, you felt sorry for him," Gilligan said of Cranston's part on "The X-Files." "Bryan nailed it."

Gilligan showed executives the tapes of Cranston's performance on the 1990s series, and the rest was history. 

A news story helped inspire the premise for "Breaking Bad."

While most aspects of the show are fictional, the creators took a few elements from real life. 

Gilligan was talking to another writer, Tom Schnauz, who jokingly pitched an idea based on a news article he'd recently read about a man cooking meth in an RV, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Gilligan couldn't get the image out of his head, he told Vanity Fair in 2010. 

"The idea of it suddenly struck me as wonderful for a TV show because who would do such a thing?" he told The Hollywood Reporter. "And if he were indeed someone like us — meaning a couple of dopey middle-aged white guys — what would that look like?"

From there, Gilligan took inspiration from the Japanese movie "Ikiru," a fictional story about a man diagnosed with cancer, he told NPR in 2019. 

The name Heisenberg, Walt's alias in the show, does come from real life, though. It's a nod to German physicist and Nobel Prize winner Werner Heisenberg. 

Networks including HBO, Showtime, and FX all passed on "Breaking Bad."

Before the multi-Emmy-award-winning series found a home on AMC, some of the biggest networks passed on the show. 

Reportedly, FX was afraid the show was too similar to its other series featuring male antiheroes. Another exec said the concept sounded a lot like Showtime's "Weeds," which was about a suburban woman who secretly grows and sells marijuana, according to Vanity Fair. 

In 2011, Gilligan called his pitch meeting with HBO one of "the worst" he ever experienced. 

"The woman we're pitching to could not have been less interested — not even in my story, but about whether I actually lived or died," he said. 

"My agents could never even get her on the phone afterward to even say no," he added. 

"Breaking Bad" borrowed some makeup and special effects magic from "The Walking Dead."

For the character Gus Fring's final scene, the makeup department and special-effects team had to create a realistic, half-blown-off face for actor Giancarlo Esposito.

To do so, the crew members from another hit AMC show, "The Walking Dead," helped out.  

"We did have great help from the prosthetic effects folks at 'The Walking Dead'" Gilligan told The New York Times in 2011. "It's a combination of great makeup and great visual effects. And it took months to do."

 

 

"Breaking Bad" producers vetoed a Marvel cameo in their series.

While filming "The Avengers" in New Mexico, Samuel L. Jackson hoped to make a cameo as his Marvel character. Nick Fury would casually enter Los Pollos Hermanos in costume, order food, and leave. 

"I just wanted to order a three-piece and really freak people out," Jackson told IndieWire in 2012. "Then people would be going, 'Wow, was that him?'"

He said the producers of "Breaking Bad" weren't interested.

Walter Jr.'s website SaveWalterWhite.com is real.

During the show's first season Walter White's son, Walt Jr., created a fundraising website called SaveWalterWhite.com to help pay for his dad's cancer treatment.

Walter Sr. then used the website as a way to launder the money he made from selling meth by making consistent, anonymous donations to himself. 

AMC runs the site, which you can still visit. Its "Click Here to Donate" button links to AMC's own website.

Jesse Pinkman was originally going to die in the first season.

Fans may have heard that Gilligan planned to kill off Aaron Paul's character Jesse Pinkman on the ninth episode of the show's first season, but the 2007 writers' strike meant only seven episodes ran.

As a result, Gilligan had time to reconsider killing off Jesse and ultimately keep him on the show. That isn't quite the full story, Gilligan said on a panel in 2011. 

"The writers' strike, in a sense, didn't save him," he said. By episode two, he and the producers and directors all knew Aaron Paul was a great actor and that it "would be a huge, colossal mistake to kill off Jesse." 

Pinkman remained an integral part of all five seasons of the series.

 

Aaron Paul was actually injured while filming a fight scene.

In a 2013 Reddit AMA, Paul shared that he was knocked unconscious, got a concussion, and went to the hospital after a fight scene. 

"Raymond Cruz who played Tuco gave me a concussion," Paul wrote in the AMA. "Tuco takes Jesse and he throws him through the screen door outside, and if you watch it back you'll notice that my head gets caught inside the wooden screen door and it flips me around and lands me on my stomach."

Cruz continued the scene, thinking Paul was acting, kicking his costar then picking him up and throwing him over his shoulder. In reality, "I was pretty much unconscious," Paul wrote. 

In 2023, Cruz told The Mirror that Paul had some of the details wrong. "I'm actually the one who stopped it," he said, explaining that he quickly realized the actor was hurt. 

Viewers can see the moment that Paul was injured because that's the shot featured in the show. 

"It's a crazy take because it's so violent," Cruz said. "The door ripped off its hinges."

Cranston said filming one scene turned him into a "weeping mess."

The season-two scene where Walt purposely watches Jesse's girlfriend, Jane, die was the hardest moment for Cranston to film, he told IndieWire in 2018. 

He said he pictured his own daughter choking as he watched Krysten Ritter act out her character's death.

Once the director cut, Cranston said he was a "weeping mess." He turned to the actor who played Skyler White, his TV wife, for comfort. "Fortunately, you have your family around you, and I went to Anna Gunn, and she held me," he said. 

There's a reason Skyler's sister, Marie, wears so much purple.

Skyler's sister, Marie Schrader, wears and owns a lot of purple items. Her go-to color was no accident, Gilligan told Vulture in 2011. 

"Well, Marie would say purple is the color of royalty," he said. The show often used color to portray certain energies and foreshadow certain fates. 

"We always try to think of the color that a character is dressed in, in the sense that it represents on some level their state of mind," he told the publication. 

For example, Gilligan said Walter's last name is White because it "is the color of vanilla, of blandness."

Cranston has a permanent reminder of the show on his body.

On the final day of filming "Breaking Bad," Cranston got a tattoo of the show's iconic Br/Ba logo.

"We were having a couple of drinks at a bar, and they brought in a tattoo artist and we thought, 'Why not? This is the time to do it,'" he told The Wrap in 2013.

The tattoo is hidden on the inside of his right ring finger. "So every once in a while I catch a glimpse of it and I see that logo from 'Breaking Bad,' and it makes me smile," Cranston told E! News in 2013.

 

 

Aaron Paul also has some mementos from the show.

During a 2016 interview with Seth Meyers, Paul said he took everything he could from the set of "Breaking Bad."

One of the items was the faux severed head of Gus Fring, which Paul said he keeps in his media room. 

The actor also took the license plate from Jesse Pinkman's first car, and he has an iconic Heisenberg hat, he said in a 2013 interview with Entertainment Weekly.

This story was originally published on September 16, 2019, and most recently updated on January 17, 2025.

• When I tried a variety of hacks for perfect scrambled eggs, I was impressed by the whirlpool trick.
• My new go-to method involves placing raw eggs in a boiling vortex of water and then straining them.
• The finished scrambled eggs come out super fluffy, creamy, and perfectly cooked every time.

Scrambled eggs are simple to make, but they aren't always easy to get right. They can be rubbery if they're cooked over heat that's even a skosh too high, but they can be goopy and runny with too low of a temperature.

I've tried many different methods for making scrambled eggs just how I like them — light yellow and fluffy with no rubbery or dry texture — but my favorite involves a boiling vortex of water.

It sounds weird, and I was pretty reluctant when I came across this egg-cooking hack online. But once I tried it, I was converted.

All you need is eggs, salt, and boiling water for this relatively simple process

I start the process by bringing a pot of salted water to a boil, as if I was making pasta. Just as the water begins to boil, I crack some eggs into a separate bowl and whisk vigorously for about 30 seconds.

Then, it's time to make a whirlpool. I stir the water clockwise until it's swirling. While the water is still circling the pot, I pour in the whisked eggs and place a lid over them.

I use a glass lid to cover the pot so I can watch the action unfold as the eggs quickly turn stringy.

When I initially tried this method, I thought it was interesting to watch them cook this way, but I was worried — I didn't think eating long strands of eggs sounded particularly appealing.

After straining, these eggs come out light and fluffy with no rubbery texture

After about 20 seconds, I use a strainer to lift the eggs out of the water and into a bowl.

I might have to blot a little extra water out of the eggs, but otherwise, they no longer look stringy and are actually light and fluffy.

I like to add butter, salt, and pepper to the eggs or put them on top of toast. They're creamy, they're not runny, and impressively, they don't make the bread soggy.

Even better, the clean-up process with the whirlpool trick is minimal

Not only do the eggs come out just to my liking and cook quickly, but the cleanup is pretty easy. There's no need to soak and scrape away caked-on scrambled eggs from a pan.

Instead, you're just cleaning up a pan that held mostly water and a strainer — I like to spray mine down immediately after using it to prevent the eggs from sticking.

Perfect eggs and no-fuss dishwashing? I'll be boiling my scrambled eggs with the whirlpool trick from here on out.

This story was originally published on June 2, 2022, and most recently updated on January 17, 2025.

• TikTok might go away. (Or not? Probably not? Who knows!)
• Whatever its fate, TikTok changed how people consume and post to social media.
• The TikTokification of American life isn't going anywhere — even if the app disappears.

Even if TikTok goes away, part of it will be with us forever: It's impossible to erase the TikTokification of the entire internet — or the effect the app has had on, well, everything.

Sure, there are several possibilities now that the Supreme Court has upheld the TikTok ban: One possibility is that TikTok actually goes away in the US on Sunday, existing in history as a strange several-year blip — replaced by either incumbent apps like Instagram and YouTube Shorts, or something new. (RedNote? Probably not, but who knows!)

In the last week, when things were looking pretty dire for TikTok, I started talking to colleagues about what TikTok actually meant — what its legacy meant. And we all realized that, essentially, there were almost no aspects of American life that had been untouched by TikTok. OK, well maybe not EVERYTHING — I'm being a little dramatic here, but it's very easy to rattle off a bunch of industries and corners of culture that were massively changed by TikTok.

Book publishing is one of the perfect examples of a fusty old thing — an industry that's existed for centuries and one that you'd think would be threatened by people's free time being sucked up by a video app. But instead, BookTok became this juggernaut force for selling and marketing books.

The beauty industry, homebuying, restaurants, the customization of Starbucks drinks, the music industry, sorority recruitment — all changed by TikTok.

Still, those various activities had already been disrupted by social media platforms that came before TikTok: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter — even MySpace. But TikTok represented something even more — an entire cultural shift.

TikTok changed us to the online core

As someone who has spent most of my career trying to observe how people act online, I've come to believe there are a few things about TikTok that have changed humans on an almost molecular level. It's changed the way we interact online — which is much bigger than just how lipstick is marketed.

TikTok's algorithmic feed upended all that we had previously understood or enjoyed about social media.

Social media has long been about followers and a direct relationship with the person whose content you're viewing. Before TikTok, follower count was important — and it was rare that a single post would go viral on its own.

TikTok flipped this completely.

It's almost hard to remember now that most other social apps have copied TikTok's "For you page," but this way of organizing your feed was new and almost confusing at first.

Sure, there were still some big creators who had massive followings, but there was a democratization of virality: Suddenly, every high school had a kid who had gone viral at least once on TikTok.

As TikTok grew to be more than just teens dancing, it became understood to everyone using it that if you posted, there was a chance lots of strangers might see your content — even if you weren't a big influencer or famous person. Almost Warholian — in the future, everyone will get 10,000 views on a random TikTok post. "I didn't expect my last post to blow up," is one of the most common intros to a TikTok you'll see.

As people accepted the idea that you might actually be perceived by others on the app, something strange happened. Instead of an Instagram effect where people felt pressure to look their best and put forth an idealized version of their life, people — especially young women — were more willing than I'd ever seen before on social media to post images of themselves looking, uh, not-so-perfect. Lying in bed with unbrushed hair, no makeup, unflattering angles — things you'd never, ever see on Pinterest or Instagram. As a millennial woman raised on Instagram, I admired Gen Z's daring to look like crap on the internet — it was refreshing and honest.

Those changes are here to stay, no matter whether TikTok shuts down for a day, or forever, or is saved by some executive order.

TikTok uncorked something in the way we consume and the way we post — and that's not going back in the bottle.

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor didn't intend to find her niche as an actor starring in movies and TV shows about race. But with a long list of credits punctuated by acclaimed projects that tackle the topic head-on, like "When They See Us," "Origin," "The Birth of a Nation," "If Beale Street Could Talk," and the 2023 remake of "The Color Purple," she acknowledges the trend.

"I didn't seek them out," Ellis-Taylor told Business Insider of these types of roles. "But I always sort of end up in them, and I think I've been trying to figure that out, too."

Ellis-Taylor's latest movie, "Nickel Boys," technically fits into this category, putting a warm and empathetic lens on a real-life tragedy. RaMell Ross' film adaptation of the Colson Whitehead novel of the same name tells the story of Elwood (Ethan Herisse), a Black boy who's sent to an infamously abusive reform school in 1960s Florida.

Told largely through the eyes of both Elwood and his reform school friend Turner (Brandon Wilson) in a groundbreaking first-person perspective, the film is an intimate and often devastating look at the boys' coming-of-age against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South.

As Elwood's devoted grandmother Hattie, Ellis-Taylor radiates warmth and determination, even when she knows the odds are stacked against her grandson.

Ellis-Taylor suspects that her tendency to get cast in heavy projects like "Nickel Boys" that chronicle racial injustice has something to do with how she spends her time off — a case of art echoing life.

"I'm from Mississippi, and so a lot of what I've done when I'm not acting has been fighting what is essentially a Confederacy that didn't die," said Ellis-Taylor, who spent years advocating for the removal of the Confederate emblem from the Mississippi state flag (it was officially changed in 2021).

"I don't hold my tongue when I see things that I feel are wrong and wrong in a way that the foundation of that wrong is race or caste-related or misogyny-related."

If speaking up has given her a reputation, she's glad for it.

"I think who I am when I'm not working, maybe there are rumors about that," Ellis-Taylor continued. "And that gets to people and they think, 'Okay, maybe we need to hire this crazy lady.'"

For BI's latest Role Play interview, Ellis-Taylor explains why the "Origin" awards-season snub still stings, her decision to criticize queer erasure in "The Color Purple," and the project she's hoping to get off the ground next.

On the disappointing reception to 'Origin' and the burden on Black creatives

Business Insider: Many of your recent films, especially "Nickel Boys" and "Origin," deal with heavy topics, and talking about those subjects invariably comes up on the press tour. How do you navigate that? Does it ever weigh on you?

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor: Sometimes it does. I find myself having to be really vigilant about how I respond to things. For example, with both "Origin" and something like "Nickel Boys," you hear things like, "Where is the hope in this?" Because there is a burden on Black makers to provide hope for people.

So when I get questions like that, I have to be really vigilant in saying, "Why are you asking me that? We're talking about a film here. Why is that uniquely the responsibility of a Black filmmaker to provide hope? Why? You're not asking our contemporaries to do that, but it's our responsibility to do that kind of work."

So that can weigh on me, because that's time that I could be answering something else.

Much has been made of "Origin" being snubbed during awards season last year and why that might have happened. I know you and director Ava DuVernay have both spoken before about how frustrating it was for that film to not get the reception it deserved. Is that something that still bothers you?

Yeah, it does. The lovely people that I'm working with on "Nickel Boys," it's hard for me to say to them, "Look, guys, I got a little PTSD going on." You know? Because I was going through this less than a year ago, nine months ago, really, and it still hurts.

A lot of what hurt me is that I know what Ava wanted. She wanted this book, and her film that's based on the book, to be a part of our national discussion about race and caste in this country. And the reality is, films getting awards, it helps it saturate culture. Not just culture, it helps it saturate our political discussions. She wanted "Origin" to be at the center of that.

Not having that kind of result was very disappointing. Not just disappointing for everyone who worked on the film, but I feel that I'm personally disappointed. My disappointment is not just my own personal disappointment, but I feel that to have a conversation, to be able to have the language for the conversation that would've been so beneficial in these last few months, and not to be able to have that because folks didn't know. And folks don't know because folks didn't see it, and folks didn't see it because it wasn't in the awards discussion. It still stings a bit, yeah.

On calling out queer erasure in 'The Color Purple' remake after appearing in the film

After "The Color Purple" remake came out, you criticized how both the 2023 version and the 1985 film downplayed that this is a story about Black lesbians. Why was it important to you to speak out on that?

It's important for me to say that because Alice Walker is a queer woman, and she wrote that. She was writing herself into existence when she wrote "The Color Purple." And I feel that it is a dishonoring of that writing into existence if that is not a priority in any iteration of it.

When we say things like, "It is about Black sisterhood"... that's lovely and wonderful, but it is also about Black women who fall in love with other women, who have sex with other Black women.

And when we're not honest about that and we don't meet that, when we cower and say it's about something else because we don't want to make other people feel uncomfortable, that's homophobic. That's homophobia at its core, and I'm tired of that.

I feel like we have a lot of well-intentioned people who want to do the right thing, who would never claim to be homophobic or bigoted in any sort of way, but if we are like that, we have to be like that in the art that we make. And that is why I have to say that.

And I'm queer. I'm a queer woman. I'm bi, so when I read "The Color Purple," I saw myself. I feel like we're quiet and silent about queer erasure. I just won't do that.

Do you feel like for the story to be told properly, it needs to be told by a Black queer woman?

I think that would be beneficial. I believe that queer people should play queer people. I think too often we have straight people playing queer characters. And I think that queer people can play themselves and should play themselves. I think it's not going to change until we start insisting, until queer folks start insisting on something better.

Did anyone give you a hard time for being critical of the movie after having been in it?

Nobody said anything to me. I don't think people really try to say anything to me too much.

And I'm going to be honest, my critique of the film was about its erasure of queerness, solely. It wasn't about its artistic merits. It wasn't about Ms. Winfrey personally or how I felt I was treated on the film. It didn't have anything to do with that. And I made sure that when I said what I said, the film was out already, all the awards had been announced.

There was nothing that I was going to say that was going to affect the box office or affect its chances. I waited until all of that was over, because the reality is when you do say critical things like that, it affects how the film is seen in the world.

I feel that I owed it to those young women who were in that movie, for them to have the fullness of the experience, the joy of being in "The Color Purple," and I didn't want to shed any sort of negative light on that at all. So I waited until all of that was over, and then I had to say that because it was important to say that. And I hope my queer community joins me, and when they see that, that they speak up as well. It's not going to be different until we do.

On her first Oscar nomination and writing her own stories

You got your first Oscar nomination in 2022 for "King Richard." In 2024, you had four films released. Do you feel like the nomination changed the types of roles you were being offered, or boosted your career?

Well, I think 2022 and the end of 2021, yeah, things changed. Things changed quite a bit. It was like a five-year period leading up, a couple years leading up to that, things started changing. I was doing some stuff that I had never really done before.

As far as the types of roles, I think it's consistent. I don't have people that are knocking on my door throwing scripts at me. I just think that the diversity of the kind of work that I would choose to do, I would like to do, it's not as varied as I would want in terms of what is being offered to me.

But my response to that is I have to write that into existence, and so that's what I'm trying to do now.

What types of projects are you writing now?

Well, one of the things is writing a story about Rosetta Tharpe. It feels like every other year there's a story about Elvis or Bob Dylan. And I think that Rosetta Tharpe created rock 'n' roll, so we need some stories about Rosetta Tharpe and the movement of music that she made inside and outside of the church, and then her blending both of those.

That's the story of American music, and I think it's fascinating. She's a woman. She's a queer woman. She had a relationship with the woman who she was singing with. It is a fascinating story. I want to see that onscreen.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

"Nickel Boys" is now in theaters.

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