The son of two Abilene Christian University professors of education, Drs. Ed and Jane Coates, Nelson Coates became interested in the arts from a young age, creating costumes and scenery for school and community productions. He learned to create sculptures from natural fibers with the help of a book his parents gave him when he was 14. He began acting in regional theater at the age of 6. He continued to perform in regional theater and sang with various vocal groups. During high school, he became involved in gymnastics, a skill set he used years later when planning escape routes for Wesley Snipes' character in Murder at 1600. Coates went on to attend the college where his parents taught, changing majors from pre-med to mass communications and graduating magna cum laude with a B.A. in journalism/mass communications with an emphasis in design. While in college he was also a part of the men's social club of Galaxy. Coates has acted in and designed for numerous theaters throughout the United States. While in college, Coates was a part of the acting company of the DallasShakespeare Festival, where he met Morgan Freeman. Coates later designed Kiss the Girls and Thick as Thieves, both of which star Freeman.
Career
After graduating from college, Coates moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, where he exhibited his sculptures, acted in regional theater and television, and began his career in theatrical and feature film design. The Stand is Coates' only television miniseries to date. In addition to designing all sets for the project, he took responsibility for other aspects of creating a realistic Nebraska setting for the Utah-based production. Faced with prices of $40 per stalk for New York-made fake corn, Coates opted instead to grow 3,250 corn stalks as a cost-cutting measure; when a winter storm hit Utah, the reproduction of a cornfield became complicated by the fact that the harsh weather did not allow the corn crop to grow taller than 4 feet. Three grade of artificial corn were created to augment the real corn, which was featured in close-up shots of the stalks or silks. The entire cornfield and house for the Mother Abigail character portrayed by Ruby Dee was created indoors in the former Osmond Stages in Provo, Utah. For the dream sequences, the fields elevated and changed angles, and the main house distorted and changed shape to strengthen the dream-like quality. His designs for The Stand garnered Coates an Emmy Award nomination. Coates’ other notable credits include Big Miracle, the first studio feature to film entirely in Alaska; The Proposal, for which Coates this time made a Boston-area home stand in for Alaska; Antwone Fisher, Denzel Washington's directing debut and one of AFI’s Top 10 Films of the Year; The Last Song, starring Miley Cyrus; and the Miley Cyrus music video "When I Look at You."
