Martin Scorsese praises Lily Gladstone’s ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ performance: ‘The eyes say it all’
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When “Killers of the Flower Moon” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in June, early reviews and awards pundits singled out Lily Gladstone as the film’s breakout star. Now, with the film weeks away from theatrical release and the hype machine revving up once again, director Martin Scorsese is speaking out about his acclaimed collaborator.
In an interview with Time, Scorsese explained why he tweaked the adaptation of David Grann’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” to focus on the relationship between Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Mollie Kyle (Gladstone) rather than the birth of the FBI.
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“After a certain point, I realized I was making a movie about all the white guys,” Scorsese told Time. “Meaning I was taking the approach from the outside in, which concerned me.”
With the script changed, Scorsese said Gladstone’s performance was allowed to flourish. There’s “a fierceness and serenity at the same time” to the actress, Scorsese said. “And it’s encased in this intelligence – the eyes say it all,” he added of her performance.
In a recent interview with Interview, Gladstone discussed the film’s massive rewrites and how the script’s tweaks impacted her connection to the character. “Before the rewrites, I had three pages of some pretty mouthy dialogue,” Gladstone said about her initial “Flower Moon” audition. “But I was struggling so much with the scenes that when COVID shut everything down and the project went quiet for a minute, I assumed that I’d blown the audition. About a year later, I got a request to Zoom with Martin Scorsese.”
During their conversation, Gladstone said she got “new sides sent to me that had beats.” She continued, “Suddenly it was a scene that had minimal dialogue — it was that dinner scene, the first date where Mollie is feeling out Ernest. And I was like, ‘Oh man, I can plug a character in here now. This is amazing.’ Because I’d heard that the rewrites completely did a 180. Leo was supposed to be playing Tom White, Jesse Plemons’s character.”
Gladstone is currently the overwhelming favorite in the Gold Derby odds to win Best Supporting Actress for her performance in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” The film is out in wide release on October 20 – including at IMAX locations – before it hits Apple TV+ at a later and undisclosed date.
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