Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is talk Easy.
Speaker 2: I'm stud FORGOSO. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Today. I'm joined by actor Lily Gladstone. She broke out
Speaker 1: back in twenty sixteen playing a lonely rancher in Kelly
Speaker 1: Reichart's film Certain Women. She starred opposite of Michelle Williams
Speaker 1: and Christen Stewart in that one, and her talent then
Speaker 1: was as undeniable as it is now, but it took
Speaker 1: a minute for the industry to take notice. In fact,
Speaker 1: as the pandemic rolled around, Gladstone even considered leaving acting
Speaker 1: for a seasonal data analytic job tracking bees. But as
Speaker 1: she pulled out her debit card to pay for the
Speaker 1: job application, she received an unexpected email, a request to
Speaker 1: meet with director Martin Scorsese over zoom. She paused for
Speaker 1: all of two seconds and accepted the invitation. The result
Speaker 1: Killers of the Flower Moon a sprawling adaptation of journalist
Speaker 1: David Grant's best selling book, which focuses on the Osage
Speaker 1: Nation in nineteen twenti's Oklahoma, where it was soon discovered
Speaker 1: that their land is flush with oil. What follows that
Speaker 1: discovery are a series of murders of the Osage people
Speaker 1: until the FBI steps in to uncover what was always
Speaker 1: hiding in plain sight. Here's a little bit from the
Speaker 1: trailer of Killers of the Flower a mountain.
Speaker 3: Oh say they have the worst land possible, but they
Speaker 3: outsmart everybody.
Speaker 4: Land had oil on it, black gold.
Speaker 1: Money flows freely here. Now I do loave up money, sir.
Speaker 3: This wealth should come to us.
Speaker 5: The time is over. It's gonna be another tragedy.
Speaker 4: When this money started coming, we should have known it
Speaker 4: came to something else. They're like buzzards circling our people.
Speaker 4: Where still warriors.
Speaker 5: I ought to kill these white men who killed my family.
Speaker 6: Innit you here?
Speaker 4: I am yre.
Speaker 1: That was from Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by
Speaker 1: Martin Scorsese. It's currently available to stream on Apple TV Plus.
Speaker 1: It's also playing in select theaters across the country. The
Speaker 1: film was recently nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Best
Speaker 1: Picture and Best Actress, making Gladstone the first Native American
Speaker 1: to be nominated in that category in the history of
Speaker 1: the Oscars, which began back in nineteen twenty nine. For
Speaker 1: those keeping score at home, that is ninety six years
Speaker 1: without a nomination. She did, however, just become the first
Speaker 1: indenous performer to win the Golden Globe for Best Actress
Speaker 1: and a Drama. She accepted the award in Blackfeet language,
Speaker 1: derived from the Blackfoot Reservation which she grew up on
Speaker 1: in northwestern Montana. We talk about those early childhood experiences
Speaker 1: on the reservation throughout this episode, but we also discuss
Speaker 1: what it's like to make history not just for herself,
Speaker 1: but for the Native American communities. She's come to represent
Speaker 1: communities that have largely been ignored, demonized, and denigrated throughout
Speaker 1: Hollywood's challenging history. With representation Indigenous communities that for the
Speaker 1: first time on a global scale, I think feel seen
Speaker 1: in Gladstone's remarkable portrayal of Molly Burkhardt, which is where
Speaker 1: we begin this conversation today, discussing how she imbued this
Speaker 1: woman from history with so much life and so with that,
Speaker 1: here is Lily Gladstone, Lily glassdown. Thank you for being here,
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. Before you sat down, I
Speaker 1: believe you were at Q and A. You've traveled across
Speaker 1: the world with this film and across every district of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, I believe as well. Genuinely, are you okay?
Speaker 6: It is a lot you know, I think any campaign
Speaker 6: like this that any actor has to go through, if
Speaker 6: you know has to go through, you know, gets to
Speaker 6: go through. I do kind of at times remember what
Speaker 6: it was like being on a theater tour and playing
Speaker 6: a different place every day and having to serve as
Speaker 6: crew and doing load in load out. And I also
Speaker 6: toured an educational theater show, a one woman show for
Speaker 6: a number of years that required a lot of speaking.
Speaker 6: But you know, the thing that keeps it going is
Speaker 6: one I really just love this film, and it's a
Speaker 6: gift to get to talk about it. I love the
Speaker 6: people that have made the film with and it's a
Speaker 6: gift to get to see everybody again because you know,
Speaker 6: it's an odd job in the sense that you get
Speaker 6: very close to people very quickly because just nature of
Speaker 6: the work you have to and then also nature of
Speaker 6: the work it's over, you know, gig jobs. So it's
Speaker 6: just nice to have the time with everybody again. And
Speaker 6: really what's just been making it so meaningful is just
Speaker 6: how much how much it means to Native people, you know,
Speaker 6: and it's about doing it in community, and that's really
Speaker 6: been the thing is these beats of you know, making history.
Speaker 6: I guess they're a lot for one person to carry,
Speaker 6: but it feels a lot more manageable because there's just
Speaker 6: such elation from so many people and it just means
Speaker 6: so much. It was the most easy thing in the
Speaker 6: world to me when I was accepting the Golden Globe
Speaker 6: to just introduce myself from the language, because that's kind
Speaker 6: of how we were raised. You know, every school that
Speaker 6: I went to with this one woman show that I
Speaker 6: was touring, it was the same, and you know, it's
Speaker 6: just a very like it was at hand. But the
Speaker 6: way that just the impact that that had for Native
Speaker 6: people getting a chance to talk about Indigenous language and
Speaker 6: Indigenous language vitalization for a moment, what it meant to
Speaker 6: either Blackfeet people, it was it was stunning. How you know,
Speaker 6: you're just when you're walking through your day, you're just
Speaker 6: kind of, you know, one foot at a time, taking
Speaker 6: it step by step. But then you realize all of
Speaker 6: these seemingly to you like small things can have a
Speaker 6: really meaningful, big impact otherwise. So that's been kind of Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like that line yet about the beats of making history.
Speaker 1: I think we should try to go through some of
Speaker 1: those beats to understand how you got here. When it
Speaker 1: comes to the film itself, for those who haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: it's based on a true story. It's set on the
Speaker 1: Osage Nation Reservation, a few decades after oil was discovered
Speaker 1: on the land. Of course, what comes with oil are
Speaker 1: a handful or actually more than a handful, of opportunistic outsiders.
Speaker 1: If I had by Robert de Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio
Speaker 1: that are trying to take what's not theirs, either by marriage, manipulation,
Speaker 1: or murder, and your character Molly, along with her mother
Speaker 1: and sisters, find themselves surrounded by this evil. So I
Speaker 1: want to start here. This is like an epic, loud,
Speaker 1: sweeping film, and yet your role, which is a little
Speaker 1: more taciturn, is the beating heart of the movie. And
Speaker 1: when it comes to this character, I'm curious. Like people
Speaker 1: often say in a check off play, the person that
Speaker 1: is most powerful is the one who speaks the least.
Speaker 1: And as you began embodying Mollie, was that idea in mind?
Speaker 1: I guess, more more broadly, how did you think about
Speaker 1: taking up space in such an expansive film.
Speaker 6: I love that you brought it to Chekhov.
Speaker 1: I told you were going to do something different today.
Speaker 6: I love it. It was an undergrad you know, when
Speaker 6: I was pursuing my theater degree in acting and directing.
Speaker 6: Chekhov definitely resonated to me as an actor the most
Speaker 6: because it's the kind of writing that does really sore,
Speaker 6: like you said, when you focus on the small moments.
Speaker 6: And I think that's also one of the things as
Speaker 6: an artist that draws me to film in general. When
Speaker 6: I'd read the book in anticipation of the casting, I
Speaker 6: immediately saw that Mollie was somebody that, you know, I
Speaker 6: understood that, I understood that her power was in her reserve.
Speaker 6: It was, you know, contextualizing that personality kind of culturally
Speaker 6: and historically. There's a lot going on, and there's a
Speaker 6: certain level of stoicism that is of service to you know,
Speaker 6: yourself and your community. It also has unfortunately become kind
Speaker 6: of a trope about Native people. So there was a
Speaker 6: little bit of a line that it felt like it
Speaker 6: was walking there right, and I was so thankful that
Speaker 6: there was all of the characters of the sisters, you know,
Speaker 6: all of the sisters were being portrayed in like very
Speaker 6: full ways, and just hearing my actual real life cousin
Speaker 6: and sister. In the film, Jenny Collins reminding us all
Speaker 6: we were talking about the birth order, I would say
Speaker 6: to birth order is very specific. There's a word for
Speaker 6: the oldest daughter, for the second born, and so on,
Speaker 6: and each one kind of gets a prescribed personality. All
Speaker 6: of the light, all of the joy, all of the
Speaker 6: attention is just showered on the firstborn mina the oldest daughter,
Speaker 6: and for boys, it's a lumpa the firstborn boy. They're
Speaker 6: the ones that have the right to wear red. So
Speaker 6: you notice in the film and is wearing a red
Speaker 6: wedding coat. And anytime you see somebody wearing around, you
Speaker 6: know that they were first born and there's a certain
Speaker 6: light that shines on them. And you know it was
Speaker 6: displayed in the relationship with the Tantoos character Lizzie. You
Speaker 6: know she was asking for Anna, even the Molly was
Speaker 6: the one taking care of her. So that's a that's
Speaker 6: a pretty good summation of that. But yeah, being second
Speaker 6: born is very much would you know, facilitate a personality
Speaker 6: like Molly's a little bit more reserved, a little bit
Speaker 6: more waiting to see what her duty is.
Speaker 1: How did you want that tie rope that you're talking
Speaker 1: about you.
Speaker 6: Know, so much of it was there in the character
Speaker 6: already the way that she was written, but I knew
Speaker 6: that there would be a way of playing it that
Speaker 6: made sense artistically as well because of that non film
Speaker 6: like your eye does tend to go to the person
Speaker 6: who's listening and figuring out what's going on in the scene.
Speaker 6: Hale says it in the beginning too, when he's kind
Speaker 6: of giving Ernest the like rundown of what it's like here,
Speaker 6: saying that o s age. You know, just because they're
Speaker 6: not saying much, don't think they don't know everything about everything.
Speaker 6: That's part of it. It's like, you know, you're assessing,
Speaker 6: You're not tipping your hand to things, You're not sucking
Speaker 6: the air out of the room, You're his doing so
Speaker 6: does actually distract you from the other things that are
Speaker 6: going on. So it's it was important to establish Molly's
Speaker 6: power in that in the different pace and tone. Having
Speaker 6: Earnest come in being this kind of blustery like cowboy type,
Speaker 6: this goofy sort of fop was a big clue to
Speaker 6: what their chemistry was. I mean, a brilliant like filmic
Speaker 6: analogy that we saw for it came from a story
Speaker 6: about how Wilson pipestem and O s age man, who
Speaker 6: is a leader in the community. He's an olumpa, he's
Speaker 6: the oldest boy, his relationship with his grammart Rose. He
Speaker 6: would talk about how when a storm would blow through,
Speaker 6: she would do that exactly how it plays out in
Speaker 6: that scene.
Speaker 1: That's the same with you and DiCaprio at the table.
Speaker 1: It starts raining, Yeah, yeah, you're going to drink some
Speaker 1: whiskey instead at the pause.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And that's where the rewrite happened. Was Initially that
Speaker 6: scene had ended with Mollie drinking Ernest under the table,
Speaker 6: but then the community said, no, that wouldn't have been
Speaker 6: Molly's personality. That may have been more Anna. So when
Speaker 6: Marty had heard this story from Wilson, he immediately knew
Speaker 6: how to replace the ending of that scene. And it
Speaker 6: kind of shows you the difference between these two characters,
Speaker 6: maybe some of the appeal that they would have had
Speaker 6: for each other, Ernest taking that moment to just sit
Speaker 6: and then going back to just generally these characters in
Speaker 6: this Chacovian approach to silence on stage. I think it's
Speaker 6: a trick a lot of actors have to try and
Speaker 6: learn is. You know, we're often tempted to fill the
Speaker 6: space with movement, fill it with talk, but then it
Speaker 6: kind of goes back to what Hale Warren's Ernest is like,
Speaker 6: you know, blackbird talk.
Speaker 5: It's cheap with that.
Speaker 1: I thought we take a look at that scene that
Speaker 1: you've been describing with the last couple of minutes. This
Speaker 1: is between Molly and Ernest played by Leo DiCaprio, as
Speaker 1: they spend some alone time together at the dinner table.
Speaker 1: This is from Killers of the Flower Belt.
Speaker 3: You got a nice colored skin, you gott got a
Speaker 3: nice house. I think you just pretend to be so severe.
Speaker 3: I bet you. I bet you got a soft belly
Speaker 3: on the inside. There this Mikasi, Well you just call
Speaker 3: me a coyote, didn't you, Mike coyote?
Speaker 6: Kyody wants money.
Speaker 3: Well that money is real nice. It's real nice, especially
Speaker 3: if you're lazy like me. I mean, I want to
Speaker 3: sleep all day. I don't want to make a party
Speaker 3: when it's dark. What's so funny?
Speaker 7: Hmm?
Speaker 3: You like bets andy whiskey. I don't like whiskey. I
Speaker 3: love whiskey.
Speaker 6: I have good whiskey, not bad whiskey.
Speaker 3: I think we should try someone and find out.
Speaker 4: Ish it.
Speaker 6: Old cat she no, no, no, no, don't close it.
Speaker 3: What a.
Speaker 6: We need to be quiet for a while. Storm it's uh,
Speaker 6: what's powerful. So we need to be quiet for a while.
Speaker 3: It's good for the crops, that's for sure.
Speaker 6: Just be still.
Speaker 1: Coming back. You and Scorsese have done a lot of
Speaker 1: q and as for this movie. Someone argue, maybe it's
Speaker 1: maybe too many. How many q and as can you do?
Speaker 1: I don't know. You two have done them all, and
Speaker 1: they're all great. You two make all of them fun
Speaker 1: and interesting, and it is a testament to you both.
Speaker 1: But one thing that happens a lot in these q
Speaker 1: and as I've seen a few of them, invariably someone
Speaker 1: in the audience, after they get through their long winded
Speaker 1: question or comment, usually more comment than a question, they'll
Speaker 1: say something to the extent of this is an unbelievable
Speaker 1: Western and then you and Squarsese both roll your eyes,
Speaker 1: just as you did to me. Even though I'm quoting someone,
Speaker 1: I'm not calling.
Speaker 6: You think I can tell where you're going. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Instead, you have not considered the film in Western. You've
Speaker 1: called it a trickster story. Can you explain the distinction.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 6: Well, going back a little bit to that previous point
Speaker 6: of like the dynamic between Ernest and Molly and kind
Speaker 6: of the stillness that she holds, the observational quality she holds.
Speaker 6: A lot of trickster stories, you know, they're different culturally
Speaker 6: wherever you go. Some of them are very like you know,
Speaker 6: they're not public domain. They stay with the community and
Speaker 6: are not really shared much. And it's not just trickster stories,
Speaker 6: just stories and oral tradition. But a lot of these
Speaker 6: trickster stories were ones that you know, kids would hear
Speaker 6: and that would be told in community and would be
Speaker 6: told to new people coming in. But yeah, the inspiration
Speaker 6: for this trickster it happened just very organically, and it
Speaker 6: helped me contextualize what the story really felt like it
Speaker 6: was about. When I was in my early language lessons
Speaker 6: with Christopher Cote, a language of vitalizationist. He's proficient enough
Speaker 6: with the language that he thinks in it and he
Speaker 6: can be creative in it. And he also knows that
Speaker 6: when you're teaching language, culture and worldview go with it.
Speaker 6: So when he would be teaching me initially, there was
Speaker 6: just a long period of time where I liked hearing
Speaker 6: O Sage and you know, kind of soaking it in
Speaker 6: because it's very different language than any other indigenous language
Speaker 6: that had spoken. But Chris would often tell me these
Speaker 6: shell me Gassi stories in the language he would say
Speaker 6: at first in O Sage and then translate into English.
Speaker 6: And I noticed he kept telling me trickster stories that
Speaker 6: felt familiar. Blackfeet have a trickster figure two and a
Speaker 6: lot of the stories that you hear when you're a kid,
Speaker 6: they're funny, you know, the trickster in this case, Osage
Speaker 6: have several But shell me Gassi meaning Coyote is like
Speaker 6: the fop is the self serving, hedonistic one that's always
Speaker 6: getting himself into trouble. That helped me see immediately like oh,
Speaker 6: when Mollie calls him Shelmi Cossi, and that story that
Speaker 6: was added later into that scene, as it gave me
Speaker 6: when I was hearing this story and hearing like, oh,
Speaker 6: there's that dynamic, Ernest is very shell me Cossi like,
Speaker 6: And it gave me a big blind spot that Mollie
Speaker 6: could have had for Ernest to hide in if she
Speaker 6: felt like she had him figured out, if she had
Speaker 6: his number from the get go, and she's like, all right,
Speaker 6: I know this character, and I know how this story goes.
Speaker 6: I'm going to stay ahead of it. And you know,
Speaker 6: back then thinking, you know, he likes making a party
Speaker 6: and staying up all night, and he likes he sure
Speaker 6: does like money. You know, all of those things were
Speaker 6: above ground, and we're very reminiscent of that personality. And
Speaker 6: you know, you grow up when you're younger, it just
Speaker 6: kind of by design trickster stories, oral tradition, you know,
Speaker 6: so you get told a story in like a prescriptive
Speaker 6: way when you're growing up, and you don't necessarily figure
Speaker 6: out until later that that story was trying to teach
Speaker 6: you something.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to talk about one of those, because
Speaker 1: you grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation in northwestern Montana
Speaker 1: and you were told all of these tricks or stories.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think you even mounted a production with
Speaker 1: this children's theater company called The Legend Knoppi and the Rock.
Speaker 6: You're good you did a deep dive. Yeah, that was
Speaker 6: in elementary school.
Speaker 1: So this was like your first big play and performance.
Speaker 6: One of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you would say that on the week that
Speaker 1: you performed this, it was the one week out of
Speaker 1: the year that you were.
Speaker 6: Cool when, yeah, whenever we were doing a play, Suddenly
Speaker 6: I kind of made sense to people.
Speaker 1: What did that performance and that story do for you?
Speaker 6: I mean, that one was cool because there had already
Speaker 6: been a couple of years that Missoula Children's Theater was
Speaker 6: coming in and bringing stories like Hans Christian Andersen Tales
Speaker 6: or Cinderella or Jack and the Beanstalk, stuff like that,
Speaker 6: and that was fun, you know, that was incredibly fun.
Speaker 6: But the year that we did that trickster story, the
Speaker 6: Rock Chases Chase's Old Man, that was the year that
Speaker 6: we'd had Blackfeet language in our curriculum. My mom was
Speaker 6: on school board back then, and she and a bunch
Speaker 6: of other parents and other community members, you know, got
Speaker 6: grants to bring language language teachers into our school. So
Speaker 6: Edward and Wilman north Pegan, they're the ones who decided
Speaker 6: that we were going to do one of our funny
Speaker 6: stories for a school play that year. And I got
Speaker 6: to play one of the nighthawks that blasted apart this rock,
Speaker 6: part of a group of nighthawks to save old Man
Speaker 6: from this boulder that was chasing him down the hill.
Speaker 6: And the rock got blasted apart by fecal matter, you know,
Speaker 6: just birds shitting on this rock, which you know, was
Speaker 6: a really fun thing to do in elementary school, and
Speaker 6: some of our you know, non Blackfeet, more conservative community members,
Speaker 6: I think, didn't like it too much. But yeah, the
Speaker 6: having that story and having fun with it and doing
Speaker 6: it in a very theatrical way back then, it was
Speaker 6: it was really unforgettable. And like you do, get these
Speaker 6: trickster stories embedded. And the way that it like kind
Speaker 6: of ended up applying to Killers with the Flower Moon
Speaker 6: was if you follow the whole structure of it, you know,
Speaker 6: the relationship between Ernest and Molly, and then you know
Speaker 6: Hail kind of being folded into it. You know, Coyote
Speaker 6: just kind of does what feels right to him in
Speaker 6: the moment, doesn't really think ahead too much, unless just
Speaker 6: in like a crafty, self serving way, but ultimately, like
Speaker 6: when the story's over, doesn't really win. Sometimes it gets
Speaker 6: what he wants but also is punished for it. But
Speaker 6: then you look at the world that's changed around the
Speaker 6: movement of this trickster figure and all of the you know,
Speaker 6: the wake that they've left, all of the harm that
Speaker 6: they've caused. So yeah, I would just kind of joke
Speaker 6: with Marty that like where this uh, this Western maybe
Speaker 6: ends as like, you know, this is a trickster narrative,
Speaker 6: it's trickster noir. Might be kind of a new genre. Yeah,
Speaker 6: Native Native people and Native stories, largely in Hollywood have
Speaker 6: existed only in the genre of the Western. But like,
Speaker 6: we're much bigger than that, and this film is bigger
Speaker 6: than that. We're talking about this hugely unjust period of
Speaker 6: time in American history that is not taught in American history.
Speaker 6: You know, it's it's a reparative thing to have a
Speaker 6: film like this and to saddle it in the Western
Speaker 6: genre that it's just about cowboys and Indians. You know,
Speaker 6: it's like, this is human beings exploiting another group of
Speaker 6: human beings and the love that's in the middle of that.
Speaker 6: You know, it's tragic.
Speaker 1: The fact that you were raised on trickster stories and
Speaker 1: have now made perhaps the definitive one on film is
Speaker 1: kind of a full circle moment that that feels like
Speaker 1: it would be contrived in a movie, but it is
Speaker 1: your life.
Speaker 6: Yeah, my whole life feels like it could be contrived
Speaker 6: in a movie.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about some of that. You did say
Speaker 1: that that line about that one week in which you
Speaker 1: got to perform you felt cool. What about the other
Speaker 1: fifty one weeks? What were those like for you?
Speaker 6: Oh, just having a little bit too much creative energy
Speaker 6: to expend too much. Yeah, like being loud, being goofy,
Speaker 6: being restless.
Speaker 1: You don't seem really like any I think you really.
Speaker 6: I grew into something. I grew into more grounded place.
Speaker 6: But as a kid, I was kind of it was
Speaker 6: a lot. My parents said they decided to have one
Speaker 6: because I was enough to handle. But yeah, just just
Speaker 6: being a kid and being expressive and then for some
Speaker 6: reason having a script, having an audience, having like bumpers
Speaker 6: around it like made sense. I could snap in, I
Speaker 6: could focus, I could I could be as big as
Speaker 6: I wanted to be. And that was applauded instead of
Speaker 6: like kind of encouraged. Away from you, I guess.
Speaker 1: Even does your family move from the reservation in Montana
Speaker 1: to a suburb in Seattle. You continued this pursuit of acting,
Speaker 1: and you said, once my identity at home and then
Speaker 1: in high school became synonymous with acting. I just want
Speaker 1: to hold that my identity became synonymous with acting, like,
Speaker 1: did that leave any room for your identity to be
Speaker 1: formed away from the stage or did you see performance
Speaker 1: as your path to a kind of self actualization.
Speaker 6: That's a good, good wording, kind of just extrapolating on
Speaker 6: this term of self actualizing, self actualization that comes from
Speaker 6: Maslow's hierarchy of need, and to become a self actualized person,
Speaker 6: you need to have basic needs met all the way
Speaker 6: up to this hierarchy of you know, the pinnacle of
Speaker 6: I guess Western society is a self actualized person who
Speaker 6: was in their element, who knows what they're doing, who
Speaker 6: can just you know, soar they're not just constantly trying
Speaker 6: to meet their basic needs. Maslow developed that as far
Speaker 6: as I understand an observation of either Bnobo's or some
Speaker 6: other primate, and kind of through a westernized lens. But
Speaker 6: later in his life and later in his career it
Speaker 6: was only now just kind of being published more. But
Speaker 6: he spent time with Zixica and Canada Blackfeet people, Blackfoot Nation,
Speaker 6: and he actually completely amended his work there based upon
Speaker 6: what he was seeing and based upon you know, in
Speaker 6: conversations with people up there about this self actualizing hierarchy
Speaker 6: of need that he developed. He witnessed a society where
Speaker 6: a whole self actualization is the first step. Human beings
Speaker 6: are born self actualized in this society, and I felt that,
Speaker 6: and I think that's where this synonymous acting identity kind
Speaker 6: of came from initially in early childhood and just kind
Speaker 6: of stayed with me in high school when other people
Speaker 6: were trying to figure you out because I'd moved from
Speaker 6: the Res. I lived in Washington and went to school
Speaker 6: there for seven years before I went back to Montana.
Speaker 6: But in those seven years, it was like it was
Speaker 6: a big cultural shift to suddenly, like you know, in
Speaker 6: those years as adolescent years, people want to figure out
Speaker 6: who you are and what you're about. But I'd already
Speaker 6: walked in with the sense that it was very community
Speaker 6: and family instilled that my purpose and like what I
Speaker 6: was really good at was acting and was being on
Speaker 6: stage and was dancing as well. I used to be
Speaker 6: a ballerina. Yeah, it's after Maslow. It'd spent some time
Speaker 6: with Blackfoot. You know what comes after self actualization, the
Speaker 6: individual and the self is encouraged to uphold the community,
Speaker 6: and that helps with community actualization. Everybody in society is
Speaker 6: balanced as doing well when there's a purpose for each
Speaker 6: individual and everybody's playing their part. And then beyond that,
Speaker 6: when a community is healthy, then the culture continues. Cultural
Speaker 6: perpetuity is that pinnacle. So later on in his life,
Speaker 6: that was the articulation that had developed, and that's kind of,
Speaker 6: you know, the acting identity and the arts. His activism
Speaker 6: has always felt hand in hand with me to that.
Speaker 6: You know, our stories are how we understand ourselves, how
Speaker 6: we know our place in society, how we know our histories,
Speaker 6: you know, and since in the holdovers, like Giamatti's character,
Speaker 6: it's the quote history is, you know, it's not necessarily
Speaker 6: just to study the past. It's how we understand the present,
Speaker 6: and stories help shape our complete understanding of ourselves in
Speaker 6: the world. So acting has always felt like a very
Speaker 6: high calling.
Speaker 1: Sorry, someone keeps breaking into my car over there. So
Speaker 1: you went into college with the pretty keen understanding of
Speaker 1: not only yourself but your place and your utility. And
Speaker 1: I wonder when you go into one of those first
Speaker 1: acting classes and you have this teacher introducing the theater
Speaker 1: of the oppressed right to you, what was her mission
Speaker 1: statement that she gave to you and your fellow classmates.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Jilly and Campan is the one who introduced us
Speaker 6: to Theater of the Oppressed, and she started seeing the
Speaker 6: correlation between storytelling and activism. And she had done she
Speaker 6: had done a play about people with neurological damage called
Speaker 6: The Puzzle Club and it was a documentary theater piece
Speaker 6: that was that she had performed the year before. And yeah,
Speaker 6: she introduced us to the Theater of the Oppressed. First
Speaker 6: thing out of her mouth to all of us in
Speaker 6: class was Okay, none of you and here are going
Speaker 6: to be famous. If that's why you want to be here,
Speaker 6: then you can probably consider doing something else. And she also,
Speaker 6: you know, she's reminded me, and she's said it several
Speaker 6: times since that she has said, if Finny we proved
Speaker 6: me wrong, you can totally wake me up at three
Speaker 6: in the morning, you can call me you. I don't
Speaker 6: ever know where in the world she is at that point,
Speaker 6: but I've caught up. But yeah, I remember really liking
Speaker 6: that and that she followed it up with introducing us
Speaker 6: to Theater of the Oppressed, because I was like, yeah,
Speaker 6: like that's it. Acting can serve this purpose where story
Speaker 6: gives you a sense of agency and can you know,
Speaker 6: like a control of your own destiny in a in
Speaker 6: a not an artificial sense, but you know, in a
Speaker 6: controlled way kind of like there's bumpers around it. And
Speaker 6: then when you actualize a story on stage, maybe you
Speaker 6: can actualize it in society.
Speaker 1: She also said, you are here because you want to
Speaker 1: study theater. Keep yourself interested and invested in the world,
Speaker 1: and you will stay an interesting performer as you leave college.
Speaker 1: I'm curious about the work you did that you referenced
Speaker 1: earlier in this conversation, the one Woman shows that you
Speaker 1: mounted for fourth grade students to college students. That idea
Speaker 1: of like staying invested. How did you do that in
Speaker 1: putting on the shows as part of the Living Voices program.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I Living Voices you pretty typical process. You audition
Speaker 6: for a show that they have in their repertoire, and
Speaker 6: then you perform the show that they give you. And
Speaker 6: that one was done with mixed media, so there were
Speaker 6: archival footage photos from these points in history. And the
Speaker 6: piece that I toured with Native Vision was about Native
Speaker 6: boarding school experience, the assimilation policy, and then Navajo code talkers,
Speaker 6: and it was kind of to illustrate this irony that
Speaker 6: a country who had just walked out of this history
Speaker 6: of assimilating native language then called upon native speakers to
Speaker 6: basically win the war when World War two for the US.
Speaker 1: And what would a typical performance look like.
Speaker 6: That would be going into a classroom and performing this
Speaker 6: twenty minute show with this mixed media piece and then
Speaker 6: facilitating conversation and supplementing history. So a lot of times
Speaker 6: I'd go to places where just the intro you into
Speaker 6: some places in this country and like, I mean a
Speaker 6: blanket survey that was done in correlation with like changing
Speaker 6: the name all of these mascots that we still have,
Speaker 6: you know, just one after the other, and you know,
Speaker 6: we're in the season right now, but just the public
Speaker 6: perception of Native people's and just a blanket survey off
Speaker 6: the street, there was forty percent of the people asked
Speaker 6: didn't think that we still existed. So walking into schools,
Speaker 6: it's like you could feel that, you could feel that
Speaker 6: the perception was, you know, one, I don't look like
Speaker 6: the Indians that kids are used to seeing on you know,
Speaker 6: the Washington football team logo.
Speaker 1: You could feel that. Yeah, And how did that feel?
Speaker 6: I mean, there was already a little mountain climb, just
Speaker 6: like having to get textualized, and it started with introducing
Speaker 6: myself in the language.
Speaker 1: I mean, having to perform is hard enough.
Speaker 6: Some places are more amenable than others, and some teachers
Speaker 6: are more hands on and facilitate an environment in their
Speaker 6: classroom for it easier than others. There were definitely only
Speaker 6: places where I knew, like, okay, I'm responsible for their
Speaker 6: entire curriculum about native history today a lot of times
Speaker 6: in one hour, in fifty minutes. So yeah, it's what
Speaker 6: I found just in that show, and in distillation of
Speaker 6: doing this for seven years, all across the country, all
Speaker 6: different age groups. It was also kind of remarkable to
Speaker 6: see how much public perception and how much curriculum had
Speaker 6: been changing, because a lot of times I would go
Speaker 6: back to the same school several years in a row,
Speaker 6: and you could see kids, You could see that shift,
Speaker 6: You could see the rise of gen Z. I may
Speaker 6: not watch that happen. I went from being the young
Speaker 6: millennial and then watching suddenly gen Z coming up and
Speaker 6: being incredibly smart and incredibly interested and invested. And I
Speaker 6: think maybe the most important one that I did once
Speaker 6: was at at a joint to Air Force base, Fort
Speaker 6: Lewis McCord Joint Air Force Base in Seattle at the
Speaker 6: hospital there, it was a show for wounded veterans, lot
Speaker 6: of them were Native, and like a lot of the
Speaker 6: show because my character had come from a healing family,
Speaker 6: had talked about traditional healing and the application of that.
Speaker 6: She went to a school to become a nurse, while
Speaker 6: while her brother, her clan brother, was serving as an
Speaker 6: apocode talker in World War Two, she was serving as
Speaker 6: a nurse and healing wounded veterans. The impact that that
Speaker 6: had in that room was pretty immense too, So it
Speaker 6: was all over the place. I mean, it was sometimes
Speaker 6: feeling like, Okay, I'm bringing the entire curriculum for American
Speaker 6: Indian history, or okay, I'm bringing representation to wounded veterans
Speaker 6: who are in a hospital that specializes in PTSD treatment
Speaker 6: and mental health treatment for wounded warriors. And yeah, it
Speaker 6: kind of surprised me. It's like, all right, I'm doing
Speaker 6: this little one woman show that's teaching about history, but
Speaker 6: it's having this like deep healing impact on some audiences.
Speaker 6: And that's a lot to carry as a young woman.
Speaker 6: But in a lot of ways, that I think is
Speaker 6: one reason that this whole season is exhausted for me,
Speaker 6: But that's really what it's about, letting the film kind
Speaker 6: of shatter a lot of paradigm and illustrate a history
Speaker 6: that people weren't used to seeing, and then somehow having
Speaker 6: a little bit of practice at catching and understanding maybe
Speaker 6: what some of the public perception is that needs to change,
Speaker 6: or stereotypes that need to be broken, or what needs
Speaker 6: to be contextualized.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking as you were answering, I really
Speaker 1: was just asking about the toll that it took on you,
Speaker 1: and yet you basically mentioned everyone else in the equation,
Speaker 1: the students watching the shows, the veterans that felt seen
Speaker 1: in your performance. But I do wonder, and I do
Speaker 1: want to sit with this as you're a kid turning
Speaker 1: into this young adult traveling with this show for seven years,
Speaker 1: making work that isn't just about historical trauma or revisiting
Speaker 1: historical trauma, but actually having to live and embody it
Speaker 1: as a performer.
Speaker 6: Sometimes for boarding school survivors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, what did that do to you?
Speaker 6: And I think a lot of that probably still remains
Speaker 6: to be seen, But I think it definitely prepared me
Speaker 6: for being out again in this way, and I think
Speaker 6: it also did give me the perception that I as
Speaker 6: we you know, maybe it's because of where I was raised,
Speaker 6: or how my parents brought me up, the way my
Speaker 6: grandma raised me. I know that. You know, I'm an individual.
Speaker 6: I have my own interests, I have my own proclivities,
Speaker 6: I have my own you know, passions. But I wasn't
Speaker 6: created in a vacuum. You know, I'm part of a
Speaker 6: larger community. I'm part of a larger history. You know,
Speaker 6: I hear this all the time. I'm a spirit having
Speaker 6: a human experience like we all are, and my human
Speaker 6: experience is inextricably tied to what makes me human, Like
Speaker 6: who the people are that I was brought up around.
Speaker 6: Who the people are that meeting in these processes, and
Speaker 6: in doing that show, performing that show for wounded veterans,
Speaker 6: performing that show for boarding school survivors, for Native kids,
Speaker 6: those were the shows that really taught me, Okay, this
Speaker 6: isn't about me. These stories belong to everybody. I'm acting
Speaker 6: the story that actually belongs to somebody else's lived experience.
Speaker 6: I think that just has always given me a really
Speaker 6: strong sense of responsibility to do so with compassion, have
Speaker 6: great compassion for these specific experiences, but also understand how
Speaker 6: it shaped my reality too. You know, if storytelling is
Speaker 6: a transformative healing thing, then you do receive benefit from
Speaker 6: that as the performer too. But yeah, it's I think
Speaker 6: when shows are done in community that much, and that
Speaker 6: show particularly, I couldn't keep doing it for a long
Speaker 6: you know, six seven years is a long time to
Speaker 6: do one thing. Anyways, and you know it wasn't my
Speaker 6: around the clock job. I also cashiered at Staples.
Speaker 1: For health insurance.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, you really do your research.
Speaker 1: It's the first time I think an actor has worked
Speaker 1: at Staples for the health of trends. I'm almost certain,
Speaker 1: And I.
Speaker 6: Don't know what their policy is anymore. I know they're
Speaker 6: closing a lot of their brick and mortar stores. But
Speaker 6: it wasn't bad. I could work five hours a week
Speaker 6: and have full medical, full ocular, full dental, and a
Speaker 6: pretty decent metaal.
Speaker 1: We will ask them to be presenting sponsors on this episode.
Speaker 6: I hope they're still doing that for their employees.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty four after a global pandemic, I hope.
Speaker 1: So with that, why don't we take a break for
Speaker 1: a second and cut to our sponsors. None of whom
Speaker 1: I think are staples this week. Nevertheless, when we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit more about some of your
Speaker 1: early complicated experiences with the film industry as you tried
Speaker 1: to break in and make a name for yourself. That's
Speaker 1: all coming up next with our guest Lily Gladstone. You know,
Speaker 1: while you're doing this work and working at stables, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about, like all the auditions that you went on,
Speaker 1: so many auditions, and you've described this process of making work,
Speaker 1: of embodying a character so beautifully, so movingly, and yet
Speaker 1: I'm trying to hold what is good about making art
Speaker 1: with the fact that it has to be made, for
Speaker 1: the most part, within an industry that is not particularly compassionate.
Speaker 1: And so throughout this period when you're auditioning, I've read
Speaker 1: it in so many the interviews you talking about casting
Speaker 1: directors that would say in more PC language but essentially
Speaker 1: say that you're not Indian enough and quotes. What exactly
Speaker 1: did you take that to mean.
Speaker 6: That I'm not playing to the stereotype that you feel
Speaker 6: like you need to see for this project. And you know,
Speaker 6: I was really grateful when I was through these circuits
Speaker 6: came into the orbit of Renee Haynes, who casts Native people.
Speaker 6: I mean, she's a pretty established casting director that specializes
Speaker 6: in Native actors. And her first job was working on
Speaker 6: a film called War Party that my dad worked on
Speaker 6: when I was little. He was a rigger. He was
Speaker 6: my dad's a boiler maker, boilermaker rigor, and he was
Speaker 6: on the reds laid off, you know, during a period
Speaker 6: of time because normally wouldn't have to go to Seattle
Speaker 6: for some months out of the year to do that,
Speaker 6: or you know, in Montana supplement it with masonry. But
Speaker 6: a film came through, Frank Rodham's War Party, and Dad
Speaker 6: rigged on that one. And yeah, that was Renee's first
Speaker 6: job was assisting and casting. So it was kind of
Speaker 6: funny that so many years later, like I found that out,
Speaker 6: I had no idea. I just knew who she was
Speaker 6: because she her name popped up on all of the
Speaker 6: films I was watching the had Native actors.
Speaker 1: But until you had met her.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there was the one time it was just a
Speaker 6: video game and I could hear them trying so hard
Speaker 6: in their notes to not actually ask me to just
Speaker 6: speak like I had speaking broken English, or speak with
Speaker 6: like a really thick res accent or you know the voice.
Speaker 6: You know a lot of nave actors like, oh I
Speaker 6: got to put on the voice, you know.
Speaker 1: And when they have rejected you, you wrote an email
Speaker 1: back to them.
Speaker 5: Is that right?
Speaker 6: I just said, maybe maybe you're not looking for an actor.
Speaker 6: Maybe you should go into the community and talk to
Speaker 6: somebody who's a Cheyenne first language speaker.
Speaker 1: This is a personal question. Have you forwarded that email
Speaker 1: to them? Since the Killers are the Flower movie.
Speaker 6: I honestly don't even remember who they were. It was
Speaker 6: an educational, scholastic sort of like maybe Oregon Trail thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know. So you're a better person than I was.
Speaker 1: I would print that out and I would send it
Speaker 1: to that person's house.
Speaker 6: You'd probably call Jillian Campaign at three in the morning, be.
Speaker 1: Like, sy, I am a baby. You're seeing that.
Speaker 6: I gotta find my little little joyful, vindictive Outlet's.
Speaker 1: Say, yeah, so I'll work on those with you after Yeah, off, Michael,
Speaker 1: I'll give you some ideas. There's a long I have
Speaker 1: a long shortlist for people on your behalf. If you
Speaker 1: want me to start doing the work for you, I won't.
Speaker 6: Even charge my little petty's foot soldier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, there's no problem, Sam. He's retiring the podcast.
Speaker 1: He's now just a petty foot soldier for Lily Glaston
Speaker 1: Talk easy. He had a good run. If I get
Speaker 1: health insurance, then I would do it.
Speaker 6: You know, if I employed you, I'd definitely make sure
Speaker 6: you had health insurance.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad we had that on tape too. Basically,
Speaker 1: the experience you've described fits pretty neatly within the industry's
Speaker 1: sordid history with natives on film in film, which is
Speaker 1: also why Killers and the Flower Moon feels like a landmark,
Speaker 1: a film that is at once steeped in history and
Speaker 1: this painful history, and yet is trying to add a new,
Speaker 1: more knowing chapter to this story. In the press notes
Speaker 1: for the movie, Scorsese wrote that on a deeper level,
Speaker 1: I'd like to believe we made something that osages can
Speaker 1: see and absorb and accept as an offering. A movie, yes,
Speaker 1: but an offering that acknowledges the extent of the tear
Speaker 1: they experienced, and one that might also give some kind
Speaker 1: of solace. What do you make of that?
Speaker 6: I just think of some of the reactions that stood
Speaker 6: out to me after the film screened from the descendants
Speaker 6: of some of the victims and some of the survivors
Speaker 6: of the film. Ultimately that legacy that's depicted and the
Speaker 6: murders that are shown, those are the parents, grandparents, great
Speaker 6: grandparents of people that we were working with, that we met.
Speaker 6: And I think the way that these stories have been told,
Speaker 6: the way that these characters have been erased in the past,
Speaker 6: like the Jimmy Stewart FBI story to Osage or background
Speaker 6: actors in that, and I don't even know if they
Speaker 6: were Osage, but like Native characters and that were background.
Speaker 6: Marty's the kind of filmmaker that if he's drawing a
Speaker 6: world out, he wants to do so in a way
Speaker 6: that's very close to what the truth would be. Because
Speaker 6: the truth is where the where the interest is, you know,
Speaker 6: it's where the story is. It's like everything you need
Speaker 6: is in the stories, the history, the experience that we're
Speaker 6: coming from, Osage people. People always shopping for interesting stories
Speaker 6: to tell. There's so many out there. It's just maybe
Speaker 6: it's the system or the way that you're doing it
Speaker 6: that needs some examination. I was really moved to see
Speaker 6: particularly he'd become a good friend now the former chief
Speaker 6: Jim Gray. He has this beautiful Twitter thread that he
Speaker 6: gets into his response to the film. It really stood
Speaker 6: out to me because I remember meeting Jim very early
Speaker 6: on when I was there, and I knew how skeptical
Speaker 6: he was of our presence. I knew how frustrating it
Speaker 6: was for him, how terrifying it was that this story
Speaker 6: in the hands of the wrong filmmaker, could just bring
Speaker 6: more bad attention to the community, could just bring more exploitation,
Speaker 6: open old wounds and then just leave, you know, like
Speaker 6: a kind of the legacy of a lot of stories
Speaker 6: that come into the community.
Speaker 1: It's like you kind of where people parachute at.
Speaker 6: Him exactly and then what's left behind. But it was
Speaker 6: really touching to me the level of pride and ownership
Speaker 6: that that Jim had kind of put into this this
Speaker 6: thread about the film. You know, I made a lot
Speaker 6: of friends when I was there. I go back off
Speaker 6: and I kind of feel like I gained a whole
Speaker 6: new community making this film, because you know, we've we
Speaker 6: talked candidly the whole time that I was there about
Speaker 6: you know, while we're trying to avoid this trope, we're like,
Speaker 6: you know, how can we do this? And you know,
Speaker 6: me as a native actor. I had my certain not
Speaker 6: to be this is a pun, but I had my
Speaker 6: own reservations about it, about making this, about what would
Speaker 6: become of it at this budget, what the focus would be,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 5: All of it.
Speaker 6: A lot of people that were that I'm very close
Speaker 6: to that we're very very skeptical of our presence there
Speaker 6: love this film, and particularly you know, I just love
Speaker 6: that Marty has this relationship with it that's very self aware.
Speaker 6: And you know, something that we probably as a society
Speaker 6: need to also ask ourselves, is like this this fascination
Speaker 6: we have with true crime, the way that we absorb
Speaker 6: it it's as entertainment. And how this uh, this story
Speaker 6: that was just so key to like this systemic genis
Speaker 6: of our people, of indigenous people of Osage, particularly through
Speaker 6: the Reign of Terror, how that just became a fodder
Speaker 6: for pulp fiction for so many years. And then Marty
Speaker 6: with the way that he ended it and the dedication,
Speaker 6: you know, the ending it by you know, being the
Speaker 6: maestro and taking the mic at the end and you know,
Speaker 6: signing off on the film. But then the last shots
Speaker 6: of it leaving you with o Sage people today continuing forward,
Speaker 6: It's like there's cultural perpetuity right there. Going back to
Speaker 6: the Maslow conversation, it became a very responsible indictment of
Speaker 6: just the entire film itself.
Speaker 1: You know, you're talking about responses to the movie. There's
Speaker 1: been one that's that stuck with me, and you've talked
Speaker 1: about it a bit. But you know, when the film
Speaker 1: premiered in October, we were in the middle of this
Speaker 1: double labor strike, and so even on the movie's release,
Speaker 1: you were on the picket lines in Times Square.
Speaker 6: I believe, right at the heart of capitalism.
Speaker 1: And one of the byproducts of this strike is that
Speaker 1: you were not allowed to talk about the film. But others,
Speaker 1: like your language coach on the film you mentioned em earlier,
Speaker 1: Chris kte did speak. We've never played audio from a
Speaker 1: Red Carpet interview, but I think Chris's sentiments are urgent
Speaker 1: and necessary. Why don't we take a listen to Chris Kote.
Speaker 7: I was nervous about the release of the film. Now
Speaker 7: that I've seen it, I have some strong opinions. As
Speaker 7: an osage, I really wanted this to be from the
Speaker 7: perspective of Mollie and what her family experienced, but I
Speaker 7: think it would take an osage to do that. Martin
Speaker 7: Scorsese not being Osage. I think he did a great
Speaker 7: job representing our people. But this story is being told,
Speaker 7: this history is being told almost from the perspective of
Speaker 7: Ernest Burkhardt, and they kind of give him this conscience,
Speaker 7: and they kind of depict that there's love. But when
Speaker 7: somebody conspires to murder your entire family, that's not love.
Speaker 7: That's not love. That's that's just beyond that's just beyond abuse.
Speaker 7: And I think in the end, the question that you
Speaker 7: can be left with is how long will you be
Speaker 7: complacent with racism? How long will you go along with
Speaker 7: something and not say something, not speak up? How long
Speaker 7: will you be complacent? And I think that's because this
Speaker 7: film was not made for an O Sage audience. It
Speaker 7: was made for everybody, not O Sage. For those that
Speaker 7: have been disenfranchised, they can relate. But for other countries,
Speaker 7: you know, that have their acts and their histories of oppression,
Speaker 7: this is an opportunity for them to ask themselves this
Speaker 7: question of morality. And so that's that's how I feel.
Speaker 7: That's that's how I feel about this film.
Speaker 1: Where does that land with you?
Speaker 6: And Chris and I would have that same conversation in
Speaker 6: person while we were making the film. Chris is the
Speaker 6: one who gave me the whole framework for the show
Speaker 6: me Cossie the Coyote story, which just kind of cracked
Speaker 6: open the story for me in a very accessible way.
Speaker 6: But we were sitting at a sonic talking about that,
Speaker 6: like the perspective being earnest, and how this history, this
Speaker 6: story really ideally for an osage audience, would in for
Speaker 6: a broader audience, would be told by an osage filmmaker.
Speaker 6: And maybe someday we'll have a studio that will bankroll
Speaker 6: a native filmmaker at a two hundred million dollar budget
Speaker 6: to do it at the level that Scorsese did. But
Speaker 6: because we're not at that point in history, Marty's task
Speaker 6: in doing and approaching this history as a white man
Speaker 6: like Chris and I talked about if he had tried
Speaker 6: to tell it from an Osage perspection perspective, then that
Speaker 6: becomes appropriation, because I think like Marty knowing what his
Speaker 6: limitations were, but also knowing what his strengths are as
Speaker 6: a filmmaker when you look at his other his anti heroes.
Speaker 6: You know, Chris and I really talked about that about
Speaker 6: if it is from the perspective of earnest then maybe
Speaker 6: what it's doing is challenging the audience to see themselves
Speaker 6: in that and their complacency and their complicity in upholding
Speaker 6: these systems. And yeah, like I love that Chris isn't
Speaker 6: gonna tie it up in a bow and say, like,
Speaker 6: you know, this was a perfect like gift to our people,
Speaker 6: But he did say duds think that Marty did a
Speaker 6: good job representing ice Age in this. But also, this
Speaker 6: isn't going to be the end all, you know, this
Speaker 6: isn't This is a huge, huge milestone, and this is
Speaker 6: a good example of what making making a project like
Speaker 6: this with community can do. What what what didn't somebody
Speaker 6: in a position like Marty is to influence people's thinking,
Speaker 6: you know what his power there is, but it's not
Speaker 6: the end all be all. I would really love to
Speaker 6: see the companion piece to this a pipe for February,
Speaker 6: which is told from an Osage perspective, not just of
Speaker 6: the reign of Terror, but this whole transition of time
Speaker 6: when the starting when the pipes are buried, starting when
Speaker 6: this new way of life is coming in, starting with
Speaker 6: people acclimating to having money and what they're doing with it.
Speaker 6: It's an incredible book, and I definitely encourage people to
Speaker 6: seek that one out.
Speaker 1: As we leave, to bring it back to this performance
Speaker 1: to kind of connect some of the things we're talking about.
Speaker 1: This nomination is historic in so many ways. I'm wondering
Speaker 1: how you're thinking about the Academy in this moment, in
Speaker 1: your place in it, because it is a moment of celebration,
Speaker 1: like you and I are sitting here. It is such
Speaker 1: an honor to have you here, and yet thank you, Sam.
Speaker 1: There is a part of me that wonders how you're reckoning.
Speaker 1: How you're reckoning with the fact that this is an
Speaker 1: industry that took ninety six years to nominate a performer
Speaker 1: like you, an academy that took forty nine years to
Speaker 1: apologize Disashinian Little Feather, who was famously sent by Brando
Speaker 1: to decline as Best Actor win, and you faced a
Speaker 1: kind of blacklisting in the aftermath of that. This is
Speaker 1: an industry and an academy that only apologized to her
Speaker 1: a month before they hosted a ticketed event in which
Speaker 1: they made money from YEP. So on one end, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about you and this night that you're about to
Speaker 1: have and your father who said, as a child, you're
Speaker 1: going to win an oscar one day, who said when
Speaker 1: you were born, you did not cry, but you observed
Speaker 1: your first audience. And I'm holding that with an industry
Speaker 1: that has done so much more than what I even
Speaker 1: just listed. Now, how do you hold all that in
Speaker 1: my tummy?
Speaker 6: Sorry, my stomachs? Girl? Oh, I guess with a light
Speaker 6: hand and a little bit of humor, because it's how
Speaker 6: you have to hold big things. It's also a big
Speaker 6: part of how my dad raised me. It has taken
Speaker 6: too long. It is a part of an industry that
Speaker 6: hasn't historically been too kind to us or makes us
Speaker 6: what they need us to be at any given time,
Speaker 6: to sell whatever narrative society feels like it wants to buy.
Speaker 6: You know, the john Ford Westerns, we were the bloodthirsty
Speaker 6: savage or the noble savage, no one between. There were
Speaker 6: no leading ladies in the golden age of cinema, And
Speaker 6: those were the films that my grandma grew up watching.
Speaker 6: And you know, you think about our grandparents really trying
Speaker 6: to assimilate and to try to assimilate to this ideal
Speaker 6: that maybe they held on the silver screen of what
Speaker 6: a woman should be, what a man should be. It's complicated,
Speaker 6: of course, but representation it really does mean so thing
Speaker 6: when you're still living in a world that like, maybe
Speaker 6: Hollywood's ready to have these moments, Maybe Hollywood's ready to
Speaker 6: have these conversations to change this lens on how we're represented,
Speaker 6: on whose stories we want to see. A lot of
Speaker 6: the world isn't. Given that we're in football season and
Speaker 6: given one of the teams that's that's there, you know,
Speaker 6: it's one of the teams that hasn't changed the name,
Speaker 6: hasn't changed the mascot, and hasn't changed that that tomahawk chop.
Speaker 6: You know, being a Native person, you know the right there,
Speaker 6: that's Hale. That's thinking that you're honoring and claiming and
Speaker 6: integrating something that feels indigenous to you and feeling like
Speaker 6: it's your culture, feeling like it's your strength, it's your wark,
Speaker 6: your war cry to us, it's you know what, it's
Speaker 6: that sound in those old movies that tells you, like,
Speaker 6: the Indians are coming, you know, that era of history
Speaker 6: that tells us that, you know, we're a defeated people.
Speaker 6: You know, maybe a proud defeated people, but a defeated people.
Speaker 6: You know what that does to just the violence that carries,
Speaker 6: the connotations that carries you know, these these images that
Speaker 6: are out there of us have been so dehumanizing or
Speaker 6: so fetishizing, and don't don't really get it some of
Speaker 6: the things that we're actually dealing with today. You know,
Speaker 6: this this ongoing crisis and missing murdered Indigenous relatives, missing
Speaker 6: murdered Indigenous peoples, the continued global reclamation of Indigenous languages
Speaker 6: and indigenous world views ways of life, because historically and
Speaker 6: up till now, indigenous peoples are the ones who are
Speaker 6: like holding the line for eighty percent of the biodiversity
Speaker 6: in this world. We're five percent of the population globally,
Speaker 6: Indigenous people are stewarding eighty percent of the world's bio
Speaker 6: diversity and our intrinsic knowledge of who we are as
Speaker 6: a people on this world, you know, not just human species,
Speaker 6: but like all of the different peoples on this world
Speaker 6: that that are needed, that need to have a balance
Speaker 6: in our place in that that those lessons and that
Speaker 6: knowledge and that understanding of this world is embedded in
Speaker 6: our languages that have been kept from us and the
Speaker 6: images that have been packaged and sold back by media,
Speaker 6: by Hollywood whatever. Maybe it's up to them to be
Speaker 6: the ones who start to reverse that, to start speaking
Speaker 6: the truth to like, Okay, so why why do you
Speaker 6: want to Why do you want to absorb this identity
Speaker 6: into yourself? Why do you want to accept out of
Speaker 6: hand these harmful images that just make Native people's a
Speaker 6: monolith or serving an end that serves whatever narrative you
Speaker 6: want to hear us within all of that, I think
Speaker 6: it's just these winds. I mean, when I accepted the
Speaker 6: Golden Globe, I think for ending country, that was kind
Speaker 6: of it. You know, I think a lot of people
Speaker 6: just assume that I've already won like an oscar because
Speaker 6: of that night. You know, it's just like whatever little
Speaker 6: gold statue it is in hand, it doesn't really ultimately matter.
Speaker 6: Just it's the fact that there is somebody there who
Speaker 6: represents someone who feels like maybe could be in their
Speaker 6: family or is carrying a story that really shows what
Speaker 6: some of this ugly history is that we've had to
Speaker 6: contend with and shows what survivors we are. You know,
Speaker 6: it's a triumph to see each other winning, and you know,
Speaker 6: I feel that I feel that it's like having True
Speaker 6: Detective on TV and seeing everything that Callie Reese is
Speaker 6: doing a locual Cox with Echo Inmber mid Thunder, with Prey,
Speaker 6: you know, Deverie to Pharaoh, Paulina Lane and Rez Dogs.
Speaker 6: It's like we've got We've got so many champions out
Speaker 6: there in media right now that like it. It's important
Speaker 6: that we have that representation because when the rest of
Speaker 6: the world is telling us that we are that mascot,
Speaker 6: we are that you know, that that shadow reflection, that
Speaker 6: that projection I guess of whatever that noble or bloodthirsty
Speaker 6: savage that Hollywood has told people we are intact. It's
Speaker 6: a yeah, it feels like it's complicated, but maybe it's
Speaker 6: something that will bring a little bit more balance to
Speaker 6: something that's been very skewed for a long time, maybe
Speaker 6: like with the Golden Globes, when something that has brought
Speaker 6: more balance with this nomination, bringing a little more balance.
Speaker 1: One of the first lines you had today was mentioning
Speaker 1: the beats of making history, and I think we have
Speaker 1: walked through a whole lot of those beats, and we
Speaker 1: talked about self actualization a whole lot, beginning in the
Speaker 1: middle and now at the end here and the pinnacle
Speaker 1: of it is that cultural perpetuity that you talked about.
Speaker 1: And it's so clear to me and I think everyone
Speaker 1: who has seen this movie and has witnessed you in it,
Speaker 1: that there is no question that so long as there
Speaker 1: are movies, that's not a guarantee these days, right, so
Speaker 1: long as we care about them, so long as we
Speaker 1: look to them, turn to them, that this performance, your
Speaker 1: work in it, well hopefully definitely outlive us both. I
Speaker 1: don't know if there's a stronger example of cultural perpetuity
Speaker 1: than that. And so I thank you for coming in
Speaker 1: and sitting with me, truly.
Speaker 6: Thank you. Sam. You sounded like my dad.
Speaker 1: Well, your mom's right outside, so I'm just taking the
Speaker 1: other role.
Speaker 6: She backed me up.
Speaker 1: Lily Gladstone, thank you so much for having me. I
Speaker 1: wish you look.
Speaker 5: Thank you, and that's our show.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed our talk with Lily Gladstone, be sure
Speaker 1: to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you
Speaker 1: do your or listening, if you'd like to go above
Speaker 1: and beyond, sharing the program on social media, sharing it
Speaker 1: with a friend offline, whatever you can do to help
Speaker 1: it really does ensure that we can continue making this
Speaker 1: program each and every Sunday. I want to give a
Speaker 1: special thanks this week to brit Polton, Jill Kaplan, Apple,
Speaker 1: the Academy Library, and of course our guest Lily Gladstone.
Speaker 1: You can watch Killers of the Flower Moon on Apple
Speaker 1: TV Plus. It's also playing in select theaters across the country.
Speaker 1: We'll include links to all of that and more in
Speaker 1: our show notes at talk easypod dot com. For more
Speaker 1: episodes with other great performers, I'd recommend listening to Tom Hanks,
Speaker 1: Michelle Williams, Oscar Isaac, Tessa Thompson, Natasha Leone. The list
Speaker 1: really does go on. You can find all those and
Speaker 1: more at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen.
Speaker 1: You can hear all of pushkin podcast on those respective platforms.
Speaker 1: You could also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at
Speaker 1: talk easy pod. If you like to purchase one of
Speaker 1: our mugs, they come in cream or navy or our
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Speaker 1: talk easypond dot com, slash shop. That's talk easypod dot
Speaker 1: com slash shop. Talk easy is produced by Caroline Reebok.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Jenix Bravo, our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Caitlin Dryden. Today's talk was edited by Kitlyn Dryden and
Speaker 1: mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck.
Speaker 1: Our illustrations are by Krisia Chenoy. Research assistants from Shria Aroonke,
Speaker 1: Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek gaberzak Ian Jones
Speaker 1: and Ethan Sinca. I also want to thank our team
Speaker 1: at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Julia Barton, John Star's, Kerry Brody,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Jordan McMillan, Kira Posey, Tara Machado, Justin Lang,
Speaker 1: Sarah Nix, Malcolm Gladwell, Gretacon and Jacob Weisberg. I'm San Fragoso.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you
Speaker 1: back here next week with another episode. Until then, stay
Speaker 1: safe and so long.