High above the chaos of Cannes’s Croisette, in a silent hotel suite at Le Majestic, Lily Gladstone is making an Earl Grey. Dressed in a crisp white suit and speaking in low, hushed tones, she looks perfectly serene – too serene, certainly, for someone who’s gone from relatively unknown indie actor to an Oscar frontrunner virtually overnight.
In Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese’s sweeping crime saga adapted from David Grann’s non-fiction tome of the same name about Oklahoma’s oil-rich Osage community whose members began to die under mysterious circumstances in the 1920s, she gives a commanding performance that towers over everyone else’s – no mean feat, considering her scene partners include Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. They play Bill Hale and Ernest Burkhart, an uncle and nephew who covet the extraordinary wealth of their Native American neighbours and hatch a plan to carve out a piece of it for themselves, setting their sights on the single and prosperous Mollie Kyle (Gladstone).
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She spots their scheme a mile off and yet, she falls for Ernest anyway, drawing him into her world, teaching him the Osage language, and even helping him dress the part. Once the pair marry, though, she begins to weaken – firstly from her heartbreak at losing several family members to the so-called reign of terror, and then from the diabetes which is ravaging her body, made significantly worse by the insulin shots Ernest insists on giving her.
His crimes, as well as Bill’s, are eventually exposed by FBI agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons) – in fact, an earlier version of the script centred on him, before the focus shifted to Mollie and Ernest – but, despite her ailing health, it’s Mollie who seems all-powerful. Still and stoic, Gladstone appears to carry all of the pride and pain of the Osage in the stiffness of her spine, the gentle way she folds her hands together, and the expression of deep and profound melancholy in her eyes.
The 36-year-old Native American actor, who worked alongside countless Osage performers in the film but is herself from Montana’s Blackfeet Nation, has delivered moving turns in Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women, and Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi’s Reservation Dogs, but this is unquestionably the role that will change her life. As her awards campaign kicks off, she tells us about the unimaginable strength of the real Mollie, shaking in the presence of DiCaprio and De Niro, and how she’ll approach the next few months as the buzz continues to build.
So, how did this incredible part come to you?
I’d self-taped for the role and then had a callback with [casting director] Ellen Lewis, and that was before Covid and before the script was rewritten. So, I thought they’d moved on and it hadn’t gone my way, but then, after lockdown, there was suddenly this new iteration of the film. I got a call to meet directly with Marty [Scorsese] and read with him, which was incredible. It was also incredibly daunting and scary, of course, but I was grateful that, because we were still living in the age of Covid, it was a Zoom audition so I got to do it from my own bedroom. My parents were in the living room and got to hear how it went immediately after [laughs]. After that, I had another meeting with Leo [DiCaprio] and got another call – I was expecting another callback, but it was just the offer. It felt kind of magical because that call came on Mollie Burkhart’s birthday – 1 December. Mollie and I were also born 100 years apart, she in 1886 and me in 1986.
Lily Gladstone as Mollie Burkhart, with Martin Scorsese.
I know that in the earlier versions of the script, Mollie was more peripheral. How did you feel about that?
It’s… you know, it’s hard to say – I have no idea what Mollie’s weight would have been in the story when it was about Tom White, but I speculate that it wouldn’t have been the same. I remember what I read for my earliest audition, and it was actually kind of funny – the scenes between Mollie and Ernest felt very loaded and there was a lot of exposition, so I was a little worried that Mollie wasn’t maybe as big of a character as she should’ve been, or as she deserves to be in this story. When I got the new script, I could tell immediately that there had been a big change, because it was then that I was given the space to do what I’m able to do in the film, which is to fill the space and respond situationally without relying too much on dialogue to tell the audience what’s going on. I thought, “Okay, now I can show him what I can do.”
The real Mollie is a fascinating figure. What about her interested you the most?
For me, it was about taking this opportunity to explore a woman who is so unconditionally loving that it’s easy for people to just take what they need from her constantly. I think we all know a woman like that, and we also live on a planet like that. That was something that came up when we were talking about the grand narrative of this piece and why we’re making this film – at this point in world history, with the state of the climate as it is, you have to think about the way that Western pre-industrialised society viewed the planet. It was seen as something to extract resources from for personal gain, as if those resources were bottomless.
With Mollie, she is such a grounding presence in the film and such a vital and precious member of the Osage community. When you look at photos of her, there’s so much life in her eyes, and this incredible strength and self-possession. Her legacy in that community is a lasting one – she was among the delegation that went to speak to [president Calvin] Coolidge [about the plight of the Osage]. And [spoiler alert], it’s not in this film, but it’s important to me that people know that Mollie, once she divorced Ernest, she didn’t just cut and run – she went back and got the money from him that he’d embezzled from her. So, even though she’d been weakened during this period of time with the “insulin” she was being given – a lot of people at the time were being poisoned in this way, and it was likely arsenic – and even though she died young, at 50, before she passed, she managed to get between $12,000 and $13,000 from Ernest. It just goes to show that she wasn’t defeated. She didn’t roll over. She survived everything imaginable.
And as someone who is Native American but not Osage, how aware were you of this history?
I was 10 and in fifth grade when I first became aware of it. And I didn’t learn about it within the school system – that was the year I was homeschooled [laughs]. I grew up on the Blackfeet reservation in Montana, and we had a four or five-room schoolhouse with about 60 kids, from kindergarten up to eighth grade. Like a lot of reservation schools, we didn’t have many resources and so for fifth grade, my mom, who has a degree in early childhood development, built a curriculum for me. I loved performing and would go to dance class once a week, and because I liked ballet, she alerted me to Maria Tallchief, who was America’s first prima ballerina and from the Osage Nation. That was when my dad told me that people had killed Osage for their oil money, and I remember being so scared for Maria. But, the deeper implications of the story only surfaced in a bigger way after David Grann’s book came out, which I of course read.
Once you got onto that incredible set in Oklahoma, with all of these Osage actors, what proved most difficult? How tricky was it to learn the Osage language, for instance?
Well, the Osage Nation Language Department was amazing and so helpful, and I had the Osage language app, too. I downloaded it early and picked up as much of the orthography as I could before I started working with my language teachers. It’s so inspiring to see all of these people working to preserve and revitalise this language. I took classes for four months before going on set and then was brushing up constantly. I’ve lost it now, but by the time I left the set, I was starting to be able to construct my own sentences in Osage. It’s funny because that’s so much further than where I am with the Blackfeet language, even though I grew up hearing bits and pieces of it.
And tell me about working with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. Mollie is so stoic, but I heard that your hands were shaking at certain points. How did you manage to handle any nerves and project that stillness and calm?
So, when I’m getting a sense of somebody, I learn way more about them from their silences and when they’re choosing not to engage than I do from what they say. I’m thinking about the first scene that Leo and I shot together – it was the one where they’re sitting down to dinner and it ends with the rainstorm blowing through. We had a long time to develop that scene and I had a long time to feel through how in command of that moment and that space Mollie is. In Osage culture and society, women own everything – their homes, their finances. So, I had to be a woman who was in her own home, vetting this man and kind of putting him in the hot seat.
Gladstone’s Mollie with Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart.
But then, when the cameras were off, the nerves kicked in, obviously because I was sitting across from Leo. I was aware of my hands trembling, and at one point I jokingly called attention to it myself and put my hands on the table. Then Leo, as Ernest, reaches over, puts his hand on top of mine, and says, “You’re good.” He anchored me. After that, it was fine with Leo, but then when I was across the table from Bob [De Niro] for the first time, the same thing happened. I was holding a spoonful of peas and shaking [laughs]. But I talked to him about it, and then we were fine. They’re such tremendous artists so it’s understandable, but it’s also nice once you get past that stage. It’s like a pupa shaking before the butterfly pops out.
And finally, what has Cannes been like, and how’re you feeling as you head into this next awards season where you and the movie are both sure to get so much attention?
Cannes has been wonderful because it’s a reunion – a lot of the people that are here to represent the film are people I haven’t seen since we were all in Oklahoma together. And in terms of awards attention, I feel like any accolades we get are just bringing more attention to this story that needed to be told, and I’m really grateful for that. The thing I find daunting about it, though, is that no one person can speak for an entire group of people, and I’m not even Osage. I’ve been so graciously and lovingly and carefully held by the people in that community, and I have some very close relationships with a lot of people from the Osage Nation. I go back pretty often and it’s partly because I, of course, love them dearly, but I also can’t not carry them with me when I’m doing all of this. But, I don’t want to speak on behalf of other people and their history – I can only speak to what I’ve done with Mollie. Hopefully I carried her well and will continue to, as I step onto this strange rollercoaster.