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Nelsan Ellis, best known for his work on HBO television series True Blood<\/em>, has passed away.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Parlaying his True Blood<\/em> success into more feature films, Ellis played minor roles in The Help<\/em> (as a waiter), The Butler<\/em> (as Martin Luthor King Jr), and James Brown biopic Get On Up<\/em> (as Bobby Byrd), before his untimely passing. Ellis had recently taken a major role in detective series Elementary,<\/em> alongside Lucy Liu and Johnny Lee Miller.<\/p>\n Nelsan Ellis passed away on July 8th following complications of heart failure – a promising career cut tragically short. He was only 39. We tip our hat to him, and our condolences we send to his friends and family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nelsan Ellis, best known for his work on HBO television series True Blood, has passed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48482,"featured_media":46802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-obituary"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nelsan-ellis.png",680,440,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nelsan-ellis-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nelsan-ellis-300x194.png",300,194,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nelsan-ellis.png",640,414,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nelsan-ellis.png",640,414,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nelsan-ellis.png",680,440,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nelsan-ellis.png",680,440,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nelsan-ellis.png",680,440,false],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nelsan-ellis.png",525,340,false],"profile_24":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nelsan-ellis.png",24,16,false],"profile_48":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nelsan-ellis.png",48,31,false],"profile_96":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nelsan-ellis.png",96,62,false],"profile_150":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nelsan-ellis.png",150,97,false],"profile_300":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nelsan-ellis.png",300,194,false],"sow-carousel-default":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nelsan-ellis-272x182.png",272,182,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"Rodney Twelftree","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/author\/rodney\/"},"category_info":"Obituary<\/a>","tag_info":"Obituary","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48482"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/1lafayette-true-blood-campari-joy.jpg\")
Chicago-born Ellis found his way into mainstream Hollywood during the mid-00’s, appearing in films (The Express<\/em>, The Soloist,<\/em> and 2010’s Secretariat<\/em>) and television (The Inside, Veronica Mars<\/em>), before landing the role for which he’s most closely identified, that of openly gay small-town cook Lafayette in HBO’s vampire series True Blood<\/em>, which ran for seven seasons from 2008.<\/p>\n