Ray Richmond: Having Lily Gladstone compete in lead instead of supporting for ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ shows guts
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The calendar says that we’re still in September, which means there’s still roughly half a year until the 2024 Academy Awards (scheduled for March 10, barring a strike-borne delay). But it’s difficult to imagine that there will be a more significant shocker this Oscar season than the one that surfaced Tuesday when it was revealed that Lily Gladstone will campaign as a lead rather than supporting actress for her acclaimed role in the Martin Scorsese-directed epic “Killers of the Flower Moon” that wowed the critics at Cannes and breaks in theaters wide on October 20.
In the film, Gladstone plays a member of the Osage Nation named Mollie Burkhart, a real-life indigenous woman whose fellow tribespeople and family members were being murdered at an alarming rate akin to genocide. It’s based on the devastating true story of the Osage who were slaughtered for their oil money in 1920s Oklahoma, as told in David Grann’s 2017 true crime book, “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.” Gladstone co-stars with Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays her scheming husband Ernest. Robert De Niro also has a high-profile supporting role.
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The reason this move opened some eyes rather wide around here – and by “here,” I mean on our Gold Derby Slack channel – is that from the moment Gladstone entered our odds, she was the prohibitive frontrunner by a vast margin. At last count, of 3,670 voters who were forecasting her nomination in the Oscar Best Supporting Actress race, 3,501 were predicting that she’d win with 18/5 odds. Tied far back in second place were Danielle Brooks for “The Color Purple” and Emily Blunt for “Oppenheimer” at 6/1. It was, as far as this website’s voters were concerned, something of a done deal.
On the other hand, once again, the Oscars are still six months away. Having been privileged to see an early screening of “Killers of the Flower Moon” earlier this month, I’m here to tell you Gladstone is as much a leading lady as nearly any actress this Academy Awards season. If you’re Scorsese, you might insist that she go for the gusto and throw her lot into lead. The point is that we don’t really know how the composition of the races is going to look come November or December, and it isn’t as if the awards season momentum Gladstone had already started to build is going to evaporate simply because she decided on a different category to contend in.
Let’s also guess that Gladstone’s support team believes it doesn’t matter where she has the better shot at victory. It’s about the fact they and the filmmaker who furnished her with this plum role think she’s a lead – and she certainly has the abundant screen time and character strength to back it up. Quite simply, going lead instead of supporting is a fairly major gamble but not necessarily a bad one, and I admire the guts it demonstrates.
Again, it’s also – let’s face it – still very early in this Oscar race. An actors strike continues forth with no end in sight. Most of the films that will be at the center of the race have yet to be viewed by the general public. What the 37-year-old Gladstone has going for her, besides a very fawned-over performance from critics at Cannes, is the fact she is herself indigenous, having grown up on the reservation of the Blackfeet Nation. She would be the first indigenous actress from the United States to win an acting Oscar. The view from academy voters could well be that maybe it’s time.
There have to date been three indigenous women nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards: Brit Merle Oberon for “The Dark Angel” in 1935, New Zealander Keisha Castle-Hughes for “Whale Rider” in 2003 and Mexican Yalitza Aparicio for “Roma” in 2018. None wound up winning, So Gladstone’s candidacy is indeed historic. And if it’s about history, she might as well go all in and ride the lead wave.
The early read has been that the Best Actress category is destined to be more competitive (i.e., packed with a far greater number of powerful contenders) than will Best Supporting Actress. In lead, Gladstone will now presumably be locking horns with Emma Stone for “Poor Things,” Fantasia Barrino for “The Color Purple,” Sandra Muller for “Anatomy of a Fall,” Carey Mulligan for “Maestro,” Margot Robbie for “Barbie” and Annette Bening for “Nyad,” along others. Gladstone has broken in fifth place with combined 9/1 odds since moving back exclusively to the lead actress race this week.
With Gladstone out of supporting, the wealth will now shift over to Danielle Brooks and Taraji P. Henson for “The Color Purple,” Emily Blunt for “Oppenheimer,” Da’Vine Joy Randolph for “The Holdovers,” Jodie Foster for “Nyad,” Julianne Moore for “May December” and Penelope Cruz for “Ferrari.” There are plenty of big names in the latter lineup of contenders, but it’s perhaps not quite as formidable a group.
The Gladstone move would seem to echo that of Michelle Williams last year in going lead for “The Fabelmans” rather than supporting in a decision made a year ago to the day. It resulted in Williams landing a nomination, even if she ultimately lost the trophy to Michelle Yeoh for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” That doesn’t mean Gladstone will meet the same fate, of course. Sometimes, the right move can look like a questionable one – until it isn’t.
But at the end of the day, this is all still just speculation. It’s fun to prognosticate, and while we all like to believe we’re pretty smart and our guesswork is genuinely educated, it’s still mere conjecture. Four or five months from now, we might forget Gladstone had ever been earmarked by pundits for a supporting campaign. What it all really comes down to is this: is her performance good enough to bring home the gold? I may need to see her movie again along with several other films before I can definitively answer that question. Until you’ve had a chance to assess the competition firsthand, there’s a groping-around-in-the-dark aspect to all of this.
I love the phrase “all things being equal,” because all things never are. There is nothing equal about an indigenous actress from America setting her sights on becoming the first to win an Oscar – and the first to even be nominated for a SAG or Critics Choice honor. In tandem with the emotional wallop of the story being told, it’s destined to help push voters into Gladstone’s corner no matter what race she’s contending in.
We like to think it’s all just about the work itself. But it rarely is.
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