'Killers of the Flower Moon' Cast Detail Their Creative Processes & What Drew Them to the Film

ladies and gentlemen from killers of the flower Moon as William hail Robert denero as as Molly Burkhart Lily [Music] Gladstone W as Ernest Burkhart Leonardo DiCaprio all right Lily I'd love to start with you um in terms of I always like to find out how you come to a role how does it come to you was there an audition process was it a series of conversations and then the moment you found out you got the role of Molly what was that like to you for you and what did it mean to you I mean from front to back the whole process was a year and a half because uh Co shut things down for a bit there was a major script rewrite so initially it was a meeting with Ellen Lewis letting me know that interest was high but they were going to do a locals oage casting first which gave me tremendous faith in the film that that step was being taken I was found as a local actor in Montana so that meant that meant a lot to me actually to hear um that process happened I was brought into the room didn't feel great about my re honestly um I had kind of a hard time with the the scene as it was written and come to find it was maybe the one major scene of um when you get to meet Molly and Ernest and what their marriage would have been in that version Co happens I don't hear anything for8 n months I'm like keep telling my friends who keep like insisting that like no no no they're going to call they're going to call like no they're not going to call um and then I was you know biing my time uh you know the pace of my career has gone one great India year or one every two years which you know you need to find seasonal work in between so I was registering for a data analytics course while um and while I was pulling it up on Shoreline Community College's website and had my little debit card out and started getting ready to punch it in then Skype or not Skype we're we're not in that age anymore sorry I'm such um I get a I get a notification that Marty is requesting a zoom I'm just like put that credit card back in my wallet um Marty and I read the scene about a week later and suddenly it sdes that I can perform it's like wow this is really I can take pauses I can like I can marinate in this a little bit it felt like the Molly that I'd read in the book and it felt like something that I was able to access did a meet uh did a reading with Marty and Ellen another week after that um had a another request for another Zoom but this time with Leo and Marty and that was you know the whole time I had the sides next to me kept anticipating we would read but we just talked for like two hours and you were doing don't look up at the time and like when we signed off after talking it was it I think it was over two hours um you said okay I I'll have a break in my schedule in the next like two or three weeks we'll come back and do a chem read you know cuz it went well and then it's getting kind of closer to that time I'm thinking okay 2 3 weeks from now okay that's December 8th so it's probably going to be like sometime after that and then I get a call from both my reps at the same time which actors know that's a big deal um on December 1st I'm like oh time to schedule the chem read and they're like you got it like wait no no no no no there's like no you you have it so I screamed through my phone um uh saw like you know threw it toward my dad's Barco lounger I was at home with my parents in the living room um and uh noticed a picture of my great grandma Lily on the mantle like kind of watching me through the process who would have been born 10 years after Molly and I'm like oh grandma and then for a second I was like wait it's December 1st i' been doing a lot of research at that time December 1st nobody designed it this way just happened maybe one person designed it this way was um Molly burkart's birthday oh wow Leo you know you're also an executive producer on this film what did you what was it that you read or you watched or conversation that you had where it clicked for you and you said this is a project that I want to devote my whole self to as soon as I read the book it was a a lost chapter of of American History um you know a a horrific time period in in Oklahoma it was you know right at the same the reign of terror started the same year as the Tulsa Massacre the exact same year so here you had Oklahoma which was this real hot bed of places that most indigenous tribes were pushed onto and you had freed slaves and then you had the Oklahoma Land Rush and you had this massive population of white people reclaiming and taking that land right back again so 1921 was also so I think the height of the KKK in in America and Oklahoma was a hot bed for that and here you have you know the onset of uh what was not then the Federal Bureau of Investigation the beginnings of the FBI and and Native American lands were attributed as as as part of their jurisdiction so we have this lost chapter of American it was one of the most fascinating sto American stories I'd never never heard much like you know most people hadn't heard about the Tulsa Massacre and we we kind of felt this incredible responsibility immediately to tell this story correctly that of course led to you know writing a great script then we got the we we had an initial uh screenplay where I was going to play Tom white we kind of threw that out we felt that that didn't get to the heart of the story it didn't get into the the story the O age frankly it was uh as Marty talked about it it was an investigation story it was a who done it and he kind of wasn't interested in doing that and there was this small little section with um with Ernest and Molly that and we had to read through and we were like oh my God this is the emotion of the story this gets us into the household and here is this very Twisted bizarre sadistic relationship between this white man and this oage woman and this kind of encompasses the story much better so he went off to do the Irishman and we kind of said no to that other script we told the studio we're not doing it they said okay we're we're not sure we want to go forth with it then we got a new studio we did a new script so it was like a five six year process of of getting this uh story correct wow Bob 11th collaboration 10th 10th collaboration with Martin sesi did you ever think that you know firstly 10 does that surprise you no I well looking back on on it in some ways of course it's all a surprise but um no I was happy I said well hopefully we'll get to our 10th project together maybe hopefully we'll do a few more at what point did you come to the project and and what was it that maybe you read or or or why watched or or spoke about that Drew you in well I I was told about it and then Marty was doing it and I read the book and then and Mar and Leo were doing it and I and then um I had committed to it before I even shot the Irishman um I said I'm in I'll do it however I didn't know I I read the book I didn't know but to the hail character so that's where it was with me and then they started telling me that we're going to change it we have another idea yeah I I thought that sounds really good too you know I knew whatever would be with Marty and and Leo they'd come up with something very special yeah and it is very special you know Leo uh I watched this film again over the weekend and and the first time I watched it I I loved your performance and I was like I want to watch it again I want to see why why did I love it so much and I think I loved it because of the versatility that's in it uh this is a complicated man he he doesn't just go from bad to good or good to bad or bad to good to bad you know he loves his wife he loves his family but he also has this commitment to his uncle and who who's into evil things and you know on on on the outset he seems like a simple man but you bring so much complexity to him and just talk about finding that complexity in Earnest thank you I you know I said this the other day but it was it's kind of like an unreliable protagonist you know what I mean you you don't he doesn't even trust himself and you can't trust him to make the right decision he's he's not a hero by any stret of the imagination but in the research very early on I was struggling with uh I read a lot of his testimony and his handwritten letters and you know by the sheer actions of how easily he was manipulated by hail I started to think of him almost like a sort of Lenny of M men type of character I'm like how slow could this guy possibly be and even when he's a writing Molly I mean he can't form a sentence he's so easily swayed from you know his his lawyer team back to the devotion that he's supposed to have to his wife and his family and he's just this manipulated uh individual and so I was struggling with how far to push that uh but I realized that you know there's obviously something incredibly conscious about what he was doing he was he was playing both sides of offense and he was doing one of the most horrific things I could ever imagine a character doing to his the person that you know he allegedly loved and you know there's you know we could talk about what love means but you know every every person and every relative and even people from the oage community that I spoke to they they insisted that this was a real love story that there was a connection between these these two people they continued to see each other even afterwards even after the trial but they had this um this bizarre Dynamic which was unlike anything I'd ever seen uh in in cinema history so we when we were developing the script I said when when has this been done before and I got to go see a lot of Montgomery Cliff's work in A Place in the Sun I was like wow this narrative has been done before the the corrosion of the American dream the the Lust For wealth and and what what you will sacrifice and the de will go to in order to achieve that that became very inspiring then we got to see Montgomery Clift and um in uh the ays and uh that helped with the The Narrative of our relationship as well and then Red River with John Wayne to talk about the dynamic between hail and um and Ernest so all that helped feed us into trying to tell this this story and and what this character ultimately was Lily talk about finding Molly you know I know you come from black feet Heritage um how did you kind of tap into your own experiences in terms of inhabiting her and and discovering who Molly was I think what I brought most from home was um just protocol of how to be and approaching people about our our stories cuz I mean Indian Country it's it's interesting as a native actor a lot of us have to speak for a character languages that linguists have deemed dead languages um I mean stories like this are an act of language vitalization so I I I don't like that term personally but um you know we're an incredibly diverse group of people there's 574 federally recognized tribes in the United States and another several hundred that are not um and I mean there's there's linguistic bases here just like there are you know Latin languages Germanic languages um and the difference between Blackfoot which I speak very little of I can introduce myself I can count to 10 I know some animals I know the bad words um but in any case it gave me like a process and but it's a very different cabic system it's very different um phonetic system and I mean black feet and no AG it's like difference between like German and Mandarin you know so it was it was um a lot of finding Molly came from the language and really came from being in community like I mean I I referenced that photo of my great grandma Lily on the wall and I knew I had to approach Molly the same way I would expect an actress to approach my grandma with the same love and care and attention and the same engagement that my family would expect to see from her whoever ever she would be it's like okay that's that's what I'm tasked with Molly was a real person and this history is an open wound for this community that I'm not a part of um become a part of in really beautiful wonderful ways but I think just being back home knowing how to knowing when you Vis visit Elders you bring a gift because they're giving you your time and they're giving you knowledge so you bring something um knowing how to sit and be patient and listen to people talk through these stories and not be like fact finding but be absorbing like people share what they want to share with you so I know how to sit with people and listen to experience and all of that came from where I grew up um my understanding of Molly as this high like as this woman who you know a lot of I I'd written a screen play my senior year of high school about how my great grandma Lily met my great grandma grandpa Alec there were some similar Dynamics in that marriage that you were very easy to draw between Ernest and Molly Alec was an Indian Cowboy but he was like a very like Lively one you know a funloving guy and Grandma Lily wanted to be a nun she didn't want to get married you know she wanted to be a nun so she could be a teacher got married off when she was 16 so but anyways like the commonality was um Grandma Lily was when she moved her family to Seattle she was like the woman all the black feet all SLE Seattle black feet people will go visit cuz they said it felt good to sit and talk Blackfoot cuz she spoke fluently also a devout Catholic like was at Sunday Services every weekend when she when she wanted a parking spot she'd pull out a rosary and like my dad would be circling the block and then sure enough they'd always get a parking spot um so those things like relationship to culture language family um Faith were all very similar to Molly and just given the fact that they were born within 10 years of each other so that had a lot to do with yeah all of that lent to each other and then beyond that it was just bringing the way that my nation's protocol raised me to be around people bringing that into another community that was hosting me and just listening as best as I could Bob when I look at some of the characters you've played from Martin scusi over the years uh men that are intimidating men that are violent uh play by their own rules uh William hail he kind of comes at you with a smile the whole time and yet I think he's like the most Sinister character you've ever played for Mr squisi uh talk about finding that Sinister side and delivering it with a smile the whole film and who who was this guy well I I I don't understand him um I mean I understand what he certain things like he felt he was I guess above them he felt part of the of the uh oage Community but at the same time uh he learned the language he he was but he did uh he also had no problem doing what he did with uh with with um Lily's character and and how he manipulated Leo's character uh that was like a given you know it was like and some one of the characters I'm forgetting who says oh it's an Indian and say oh that's okay you want to want him to kill him who was it the attex the great what's his name uh oh yeah then it's okay you know it's a different it's a different uh attitude toward people who are considered in some ways not people or not your equal to say the least but below you and they can if comes to that to have to get the the the head rights and all that and uh that they would kill them in in this kind of more Insidious way blatantly too but but you know and he felt he was um the way I I've seen what what he's uh he's said that they he felt they loved him you know he was a a respected member of the Osage Community too or certain parts of the oage community whether he actually really believed that I don't know but it seems like he said he did and like say he he learn he did know the language and it's it's look the the older I get the more I see people that you know you just you you don't you just don't know they do things that you can't comprehend all I know is I go from A to B to C to D is the character don't overdo it don't Telegraph anything don't say I'm a bad guy or this and that in fact I'm a nice person you know and part of the community and everything's okay nothing wrong you know that's it and that's how you played him as a as a nice guy yeah okay I mean there were oages that went to hail's funeral he wrote them when he was in prison um I you saw the letters um some people shared personal family ones that aren't necess neily easy to find that hail would write them you know how are you my friend how's your uncle doing I miss you I've my new best friend I'm incarcerated now I did not do this my new best friend is a sue Indian he's in here too and just like this man just and when we got to go to the museum I mean hail was literally torn out of these they had these sort of massive panoramic photos that they did back then in 1920s and he'd just be torn off the end he was in most of them but they T I mean that it it was literally like watching the scarring that he'd left on that Community still a 100 years later and that was what was so you know moving and and saddening is that you know this they within the Osage Community this wasn't talked about so much because of how horrific it was and how generational it was and you know we got to meet and be with you know direct descendants and relatives of the victims I got to go we were there a hundred years after the beginning of the oage reign of terror the first uh you know Murder of Anna and 100 years later after uh you know the Tulsa Massacre and the what was it called not the flower moon but the super you called it the it was I mean it was the flower moon but it was also a super moon which hadn't happened in that combination ay later since that that day we shot the the night that you know Scott Shepard and Cara Jade Meers are shooting the scene where she's getting into the car and he's taking her to whizbang um the night Anam Brown was murdered was shot 100 years to the day of when happened that is amazing it was chilling actually and what was it like working with the oage and and when you came to them and approached them about this uh you know was there convincing I mean what what what what did they kind of bring to you that that really helped open up the story for you um this is I think think a very important detail and it also mirrors the film you see that scene where yansy red corn playing Bon a castle and ever Waller playing Red Eagle say are you are you here because of whatever or is it because we paid you $20,000 to to be here and do your job um that was a crucial like element that removes the whole white saviorism thing um and also with this film greyhorse extended an invitation to and the filmmakers first to come to Fairfax to um they were going to put food on the table and just to sit and visit with the community because they had caught that the rights had been purchased they knew the movement they knew that it was going to happen they knew you know they were following it pretty much since the book came out they were following it um so yeah it was oage who reached out to Marty and Marty accepted that's there are a lot of people that wouldn't have that would have um had uh possessive like feelings about the narrative they wanted to tell you know like I mean and I know that Leo was definitely encouraging him to go do that too and he went and he ate the food he loves squash that was Marty's favorite Community watches all those little things and they remember um yeah yeah and just to just to add to that you know you know I think that um you know it was our job to listen and it was Marty's job to listen because as brilliant as David Gran's book was and it was incredibly detailed it it didn't specifically have the oage perspective and there were so many different elements from the elders about the specificity of how hard it was to get the FBI to come and do this job and then of course bringing this great actress to my left over here as a partner in the process she added on so much detail and soul to Molly but really shaped The Narrative more from an oage perspective and you know you begin to understand that she's really the heroine of the story she went single-handedly to Washington brought the funds personally asked the president it took years and years and years for the FBI to come tackle this case you know um so yeah more than anything it was our job to hear the oage perspective on this story because it was so intrinsic to their culture and has affected them so much you know multiple collaborations with Mart sesi between yourself and and Bob I'd be curious from the both of you what is something new from this experience that you learned about your collaboration that maybe you never saw before but it came out where on Killers you going to go first bob up to you up to you all right well I'll go I'll go first no we we Leo and I go back a long time and um he I don't he joked that this is just an extension of a movie we did over 30 years ago This Boy's Life um but um it was great because Leo has done six movies this that would have this is the sixth I've done this is the 10th we've had a lot of experience all of us together with him we know each other it was a very very nice way to work terrific and uh a real pleasure um I I just got to say it's the way they always should be made for me um and um it was just it was perfect actually I have a thing that I was talking to Leo the other night about a little bit I talked to Marty oh we've talked about this this subject for years decades and maybe we'll do that movie I don't know if that'll happen but it might you never know if we if we can stay around long enough um anyway but that's it it's been it was great so I learned my point is that the the older I get the more I see things and and and with us and and the the this particular project I thought yeah it' be great if we could get it right but who knows you know Marty's got other things and we know we talk but we'll see who knows that's it yeah six collaborations what what something new that unlocked in you for working on that well I I I I have a tendency to get very sentimental when I talk about this relationship and the relationship with Marty because my career wouldn't have happened without this man right here he you know kind of single-handed chose me for my first starring role and then took it upon himself to recommend me and say hey there's this kid you should work with I just worked with him and I got to work with Marty a multitude of times but they've both been like cinematic father figures to me all the whole generation of young actors that I grew up with this was the duo that you spoke about the the you know the sort of American Treasures of an actor director CT relationship that we all aspired to so to have this 30-year circle of then and he he says I joke about it but it's true it was kind of like my character in This Boy's Life who was an abused stepson growing up 30 years later it felt so natural to come back into those shoes and just become that character but what was amazing as the work started to progress was to watch the the relationship between you know Bob and Marty and how they work together because I know how I've worked with Marty over the years and we flesh things out we talk about things at Great length but they have this almost telepathic communication that's just nods and looks and then things just start to shift and it scene changes and it's that's intrinsic only to a relationship that could have you know happened you know how when did you guys meet each other how how how old were you guys well we were kids we we didn't know each other really we'd see each other in the street and stuff like we had a mutual friend go back and forth but we started reconnecting or connect actually connecting I guess when I was about 27 and um and then talked about um Mean Streets at that time was called Season of the Witch and he said we talked that we had had a frch Christmas party um and then he said I don't know if he brought it up then I was telling him I saw I saw um who's at knocking with Harvey kitel I said it was great you know and he knows that world and how how good it was and how specific it was and special uh anyway then this other project came later he started talking about that and and uh that's how it started with us you know again l i I began with you I want to end with you um you're sitting between these two legends here uh talking about history talking about cinematic rates what's something knew you learned from each of them about yourself as a performer I mean I cut my teeth in theater and uh can built a career from independent film and being the new kid on set um I think a lot of people in my position and you know a lot of times it's the first time you were on set you uh you're like terrified that you're going to not be prepared enough um and the theater training of like okay this is the scene we're going to play it out from beginning to end and like go with all the little things that rise up I think that lent itself well to a handful of the things we were doing but then watching how these two in the moment will just pull it out of themselves and like you know if it if it didn't go the way they wanted no shame no fear about just like stopping rewinding and then starting again and then it's like okay that's okay it's like maybe the first little run through was the actor's Discovery and that I need to go back and tweak that a little bit and it was so cool to watch that in person you know there was not a minute lost watching Bob work it was just he's he's surgical he goes in camera stays on him and it doesn't stop until he's done and he knows what's going to work he knows what Marty wants he knows what he wants um so that was that was incredible to watch him you know it was um I like okay I don't have to look like I've been in rehearsal for 3 months walking on set doing this we can we can find the truth of it very very much in the moment and it's film you know it's it's it's something that can take a different approach and then um Leo I just you know it's something I want to do the next time that I work um in between every take he would like run back to the Monitor and watch what he'd just done and like you know he was doing the same thing like you watch Bob do it all from like you know start start rolling and then keep rolling until he's got it and then he's like feel like you need another one no um and then Leo is um you know go do one watch it okay I want to fix this I want to fix this Marty said this Marty said this and he's very vocal about it while he's doing it and then we just keep doing it you know and so it was nice it was it was very these two who came up in film you know watching how that process organically has formed into the greats of of of the medium you know um yeah it was it was cool oh and me talking about things that are incredible to watch I just want to congratulate the three of you because it was incredible to watch all of your performances in this ladies and gentlemen uh the film is killers of the flower Moon if it means something to you if you enjoyed it please tell your friends and family I'm going to ask everybody to just stay in your seats for a minute if you can because uh we have to go somewhere right away uh but before we do please put your hands together Leonard DiCaprio willly Gladstone Robert DeNiro thank you so much that

Channel: Fandango

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Keywords: Fandango, Killers of the Flower Moon, Killers of the Flower Moon 2023, Killers of the Flower Moon Interview, Killers of the Flower Moon Movie, Killers of the Flower Moon Movie 2023, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro

Id: Ru1_0tujCzw

Length: 33min 41sec (2021 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 07 2023