Lily Gladstone knew she wanted to be somewhere special when the Oscar news came. And that somewhere was not home, watching on TV, but in Oklahoma with the Osage community, where the real-life version of her character lived and where Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” is centered.
“I decided that I wanted to be on the Osage reservation, should this news come in today,” Gladstone said in an interview shortly after receiving her historic nomination for best actress, the first Native American so honored. “I wanted to be as close to Mollie Kyle and her family as I could be. So I’m here in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Once things wrap up, I think I’m gonna load up and drive out to Fairfax and Gray Horse and pay my respects there.”
Meanwhile Gladstone’s parents were FaceTiming her as the nominations were announced. She asked them not to show her the TV screen, but instead to focus on their own faces.
“‘Flip the camera around,’” she says she told her mother. “‘I want to see your and dad’s reactions!’ And sure enough, I could kind of hear them starting to say my name, but then it just got drowned out by my parents cheering, and my dog started barking.”
Gladstone’s nomination was hardly a surprise. The accolades for the 37-year-old actor’s performance have been flowing since the film came out in October, and she won a Golden Globe earlier this month. She’s had both time and opportunity to articulate what feels historic about this moment, and remains just as passionate.
“It’s what I’ve been saying this whole time and I still absolutely feel it,” she said. “It happens to be that I’m carrying this honor right now … (but) it’s all so long overdue. It’s a real moment of restoration, placing Indigenous talent in these roles, spotlighting their humanity. … I think it is shattering a lot of stereotypes people have about Indigenous women, particularly Native American women.”
“We’re taking our place where we…
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