RJ Cyler

Cyler's screen debut in the short *Second Chances* (2013) didn't generate much noise — short films rarely do — but it got him in front of cameras, and that mattered. Two years later, everything changed. *Me and Earl and the Dying Girl* (2015) arrived at Sundance and announced him to the kind of audiences and critics who actually pay attention to supporting performances. As Earl, Cyler played the pragmatic, deadpan counterweight to the film's more self-conscious protagonist, and his nomination from the San Diego Film Critics Association for Best Supporting Actor confirmed what viewers were already sensing: this wasn't a debut you forget (Wikipedia). The pivot to blockbuster filmmaking came in 2017 with *Power Rangers*, where Cyler took on Billy Cranston, the Blue Ranger — and specifically, a version of the character written as autistic. It's the kind of representation that can go sideways fast in franchise filmmaking, but Cyler brought enough grounded specificity to the role that it didn't. That same year, he appeared in the Showtime series *I'm Dying Up Here*, extending his television footprint into prestige drama territory (TMDB). He followed that with *Scream: Resurrection* (2019), playing Deion Elliot in the MTV anthology continuation of the horror franchise. The 2020s have seen Cyler move into increasingly substantial ensemble work. In *The Harder They Fall* (2021), director Jeymes Samuel's stylized, anachronistic Western, Cyler played Jim Beckwourth alongside a cast — Idris Elba, Regina King, Jonathan Majors — that would test anyone's ability to hold the frame. He held it. Then came *The Book of Clarence* (2024), in which he takes the lead as Elijah in a biblical comedy-drama, a genuinely different kind of challenge and one that signals he's not content to stay in any single lane (TMDB). Each project has been a different genre, a different register, a different set of demands. That's not an accident.