‘The intelligence and the emotion that’s there on her face. You could see it, feel it,’ Oscar-winning filmmaker says
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Lily Gladstone has been the talk of awards season thanks to her breakout role opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in the Martin Scorsese-directed Killers of the Flower Moon.
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That journey started on, of all places, Zoom.
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Based on David Grann’s 2017 book of the same name, the film recounts the horrifying real-life story of an insidious plot to murder members of a community of Osage Indians and gain control of their oil-rich land in Oklahoma in the 1920s.
Nominated for 10 Oscars, including best actress for Gladstone and best director for Scorsese, the actors play real-life husband and wife Ernest and Mollie Burkhart, a couple living on the Osage Reservation as Mollie’s friends and family are murdered and swindled out of their riches in a plan hatched by Ernest’s uncle (Robert De Niro).
Before she was cast, Gladstone, 37, had almost quit acting in 2020 after struggling to land roles.
“You just wonder if it’s going to be sustainable,” she told the Hollywood Reporter in May as she recalled how her career had stalled. “I had my credit card out, registering for a data analytics course.” A self-proclaimed “bee nerd,” Gladstone also considered a gig tracking murder hornets.
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“If I just heard nothing but ‘no,’ it might kill my love for this,” she said in an interview with the Washington Post. “A lot of my professors were flabbergasted that I wasn’t getting cast in shows but, I get it, I’m a hard one to cast.”
It was after catching Gladstone in Kelly Reichardt’s 2016 film Certain Women that Scorsese came calling. “She’s a workhorse. She has a great presence. She sticks out,” Reichardt told the Post.
“I thought she was terrific,” Scorsese, 81, remarked in a conversation with Postmedia and other select journalists during a virtual roundtable chat last fall.
The two were supposed to meet in person, Gladstone had even done a self-taped audition. But then COVID hit and the project stalled.
“I assumed that I’d blown the audition. About a year later, I got a request to Zoom with Martin Scorsese,” Gladstone told Interview magazine.
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“We met on Zoom,” Scorsese said. “And I was very, very impressed by her presence. The intelligence and the emotion that’s there on her face. You could see it, feel it … you knew that it was all working behind the eyes. You could see it happening.”
DiCaprio, who has made six films with Scorsese, told British Vogue in its October cover story that after their meeting, Gladstone had won the part. “Marty just instinctively knew Lily was the one … There was a truthfulness in (her) eyes that he saw even over a computer screen … I’ve never known (Scorsese) to meet somebody and then immediately afterwards have this gravitational pull and instinct to say, ‘Let’s not wait another minute.’”
If Gladstone takes home an Academy Award Sunday night, it will be the first of what she hopes will be more recognition for Indigenous actors.
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After winning the best actress award at the Golden Globes in January, she noted the significance of the moment, saying, “This is a historic win. It doesn’t belong to just me. I’m holding it right now. I’m holding it with all of my beautiful sisters in the film at the table over here, and my mother, standing on all of your shoulders.”
During his conversation with Postmedia and other outlets, Scorsese recounted the first scene he filmed with Gladstone, calling it “one of my favourites.”
“It’s where she has dinner with Ernest alone and she’s questioning him … ‘What are you doing here?’ … You begin to see there’s a connection between the two. When she says, ‘Coyote wants money,’ he surprisingly responds, ‘That’s right, I love money.’”
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Following his meetings with descendants of the victims and perpetrators, Scorsese came to realize that Mollie loved Ernest.
“She knew what she’s getting into … So I thought, ‘Why don’t we show that’s how it could happen.”
The script was originally supposed to focus on the federal investigator who was brought in to solve the murders. At the urging of DiCaprio, Scorsese shifted his focus to the unraveling relationship between the couple, and the reign of terror cast upon the Osage Nation to give the story a complete overhaul.
“We weren’t immersed in the Osage story,” DiCaprio told Vogue of the initial script drafts. “There was this tiny, small scene between Mollie and Ernest that provoked such emotion in us at the reading, and we just started to penetrate into what that relationship was, because it was so twisted and bizarre and unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”
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Gladstone also helped develop some of the film’s best improv, Scorsese said. During their early courtship, Gladstone says something in Osage and DiCaprio responds, “Well, I don’t know what that was, but it must be Indian for handsome devil,” which was not in the script.
“That was all improv,” Scorsese said. “You see her laugh for real. So in that moment you (see) the actual relationship and it’s actually (because of) the two actors.”
Following her awards season accolades, the scripts have started to roll in. Gladstone will star in The Memory Police with Scorsese serving as executive producer.
Her yearbook forecast that she was “Most Likely To Win An Oscar.”
Sunday night she gets a chance to manifest that prediction into reality.
Killers of the Flower Moon is now streaming on Apple TV+.
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