Evelyn Grace Kite Lands Role Opposite Gayle Rankin and Ed Harris as Elijah Peel Opens in Theaters

Evelyn Grace Kite is having the kind of week most performers wait a career for. The nine-year-old from LaGrange, Georgia opens in theaters nationwide today in Elijah Peel, and Deadline has now revealed that she has already wrapped a role in Ashley Wright, an independent drama that puts her opposite Gayle Rankin, Amy Madigan, Ed Harris and Lily Harris.

In Ashley Wright, Kite plays Peanut, the nine-year-old daughter of the title character. Rankin, most recently seen on House of the Dragon as the healer Alys, stars as a homeless mother of two trying to hold on to a sense of dignity in a world stacked against her. The story turns on a child custody hearing, which places Kite’s character at the emotional center of the film rather than at its edges. Amy Madigan, fresh off her Oscar win for Zach Cregger’s Weapons, plays Donna Terry, the court-appointed attorney fighting for Ashley to keep her children. Ed Harris plays Judge Allen, the sympathetic judge presiding over the hearing, and Lily Harris plays Jessica Steiner, Peanut’s own court-appointed attorney. It marks the first time the Harris family has appeared together in a feature film. Steven Ogg and Michole Brianna White round out the cast.

That is formidable company for a performer who has not yet turned ten. Deadline introduced her in its casting report with a single credit, Elijah Peel, a film only now reaching audiences.

That film opens today from eKKL Entertainment, with Kite as Jessica Sanchez, an eight-year-old terminally ill cancer patient whose faith reshapes the recovery of a rock musician played by Robert Malcolm Cumming. The performance already made her the first child ever to win Best Lead Actress at the International Christian Film and Music Festival.

What makes the Ashley Wright role notable is the sharp turn it represents. Elijah Peel is a faith-driven redemption story with a built-in audience. Ashley Wright is something else entirely, a hard-edged independent film about poverty and the family court system, directed by Logan and Noah Miller, who describe the project as deeply personal. The brothers told Deadline that the central character is a synthesis of their own experience, drawing on their father’s twenty years of homelessness and their mother’s struggle with mental illness. The Millers previously worked with Ed Harris on the indies Touching Home and Sweetwater, and their writing credits include White Boy Rick and G20.

Rankin, for her part, framed the lead role as the most demanding of her career, saying she had never encountered a challenge like it and calling the character the most fulfilling she has ever had the chance to build. Ashley Wright shot recently in Los Angeles and does not yet have a release date. Producers are Yolanda Bishop Martin, Katie Hausman, Kennedy Martin and Jackson Beall, with David and Lucie Brown and JC Krause executive producing.

Elijah Peel opens exclusively in theaters today. Ashley Wright has already wrapped.