Former Living Single Star Erika Alexander Is Emotional Over 'Wonderful' Awards Talk Around American Fiction (Exclusive)

Erika Alexander has worked in Hollywood for four decades, starring in everything from The Cosby Show and Living Single to the 2018 hit horror comedy Get Out.

“This ain’t my first time at the rodeo,” the 54-year-old likes to say.

But her latest performance, as assured attorney Coraline in Cord Jefferson’s smart satire American Fiction, is getting the kind of film awards attention she’s never had before.

On Tuesday, she and American Fiction costar Sterling K. Brown were both nominated in the supporting performance category for the upcoming Independent Spirit Awards. Meanwhile, her name appears alongside folks like Anne Hathaway on short lists for Academy Award nomination predictions. 

“I'm 40 years in business, and yet this is my first time to be mentioned in these types of articles,” says Alexander, speaking with PEOPLE the same day the Spirit Awards nominations were announced. (Another film she appeared in this year, Earth Mama, from director Savanah Leaf, was also nominated for Best First Feature.) 

The two-time NAACP Image Award winner pauses, getting choked up. “What I'm trying to do, is just not be afraid of it and actually just breathe and take it in,” she continues. “It really is wonderful for people to have you in their thoughts in a way that is in that kind of category.”

“Every moment matters. I’m taking it in, and being present and in the moment,” she adds. 

Alexander recalls attending the most previous Spirit Awards as a guest of someone she met at the Sundance Film Festival. “I did not have the credentials,” says Alexander. “I literally was dropped off by my Uber on the highway in Santa Monica.” 

“There's a big tent and I'm walking across the sand and there's Porta-Potties. And I was thinking, ‘Ain't this a deal.’ Here I am coming back with credentials and a nomination. That is the universe.”

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Making her current situation even sweeter? Alexander says Fiction’s writer-director Cord Jefferson pursued her for the role in the film, which is based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett. 

“At the time, the movie was not called American Fiction. It was called F--k, so you could imagine I thought this is going to be my 9 ½ Weeks,” she says with a laugh.

Not so. In the film, her character, Coraline, begins a romance with writer Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright). Unbeknownst to his new girlfriend, Ellison, under a pseudonym, has written a novel that becomes a smash success.

Monk, who’d previously written acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful books, resents his new work because it’s the type of novel about Black life that he’d previously railed against.

Without spoiling any of the movie, the book, first titled My Pafology before F-k, becomes a flashpoint in Coraline and Monk’s relationship. 

The cast, in addition to Alexander, Wright and Brown, features Leslie Uggams, Tracee Ellis Ross and Issa Rae. 

“No one of us has ever worked [together]” says Alexander. “So we were actually marveling at that because we're meeting all each other almost for the first time.”

Alexander held her own against the other heavy-hitters. “I'm good at trying not to shrink in someone else's shadow,” she says.

And while in some of her past TV and movies, “you might be a veteran supporting a lot of new players,” she explains, “this time I felt like I was in my weight class.”

“You work a long time to be with people you admire but also admire you, [and] know what you're capable of,” says Alexander. “You come in as a bunch of soloists, but you know how to be an ensemble. And that right there, that's the gift.”

American Fiction is in select theaters Dec. 15 before a wider release on Dec 22.