Leonardo DiCaprio & Lily Gladstone about Killers of the Flower Moon | Press conference

um Lily I'm going to start with you because one of my favorite videos and I do appreciate that he did a couple this time that Martin Scorsese did was the one that he did for TCM where he talked about the various Inspirations for this film and one of the ones he mentioned for your character was Olivia deavin in the ays and I know that he said that that was not only a huge inspiration but something that you really he really sort of gave to you as a guide post of where you're taking Molly I'd love for you to talk about sort of like watching that and and how much did you borrow from that performance how much of that um Did you sort of uh live in and then also where did you find Molly what was the sort of guiding principle that you used to find her as a character I was pretty aware that with this role I was balancing playing an oage woman the way the oage nation was uh um illustrating for me really since this is their story it is their women um but also filling this void that's in the Golden Age of Cinema which I feel like this movie very much lives in even though it's made in 2021 and it's 2023 it does feel like it's part of the the era that the arys would have come from so playing a traditional oage woman but also playing you know a classic Leading Lady and kind of melding those two so that was that was how I saw it it was and what's nice is oh age ladies really do feel that Grace that um that regality the way that you know the the classic stars of the era did and where I found it really kind of cool in reference referencing the ays was um you know Olivia De havland in that film there she came from such an oppressive patriarchal society that had money whereas Molly comes from a matal local society that has money uh where Molly grew up women are in charge of all of that um as you know matal local people o Sage women own everything so that's kind of what uh I kind I guess changed the in for the love story is Olivia davin's character fell head over heels from Montgomery Cliff because you know he's very Charming in her whole life she's told she's worthless Molly um comes from a community where you know family celebrate when a daughter is born um the saying that she has to her sister Anna in the film came from one of our oage Consultants uh to have a sister is to have wealth so I liked having this classic woman in the Golden Age of Cinema to reference as well as oage women and um you know that makes the relationship in a lot of ways more Insidious but what really helped with um the last chapter particularly was wanting to hold the audience audience in that level of suspense and believing you know as as Catherine I believe as Olivia havland is descending the stairs hearing mon gy Cliff like like banging to get in you know saying everything right you feel like she's being sucked back in you feel like she's going to fall into that pattern again and she hangs on the door for a second and it's the moment of open or lock is she going to open it or lock it and Olivia De havin locks it and goes straight back up the stairs end of film um you know we pull away from ernest's face and Molly's no longer in the room so shaping the shaping the Beats you know reshaping this Classic this classic character this this uh it earned Olivia De havind and Oscar it was you know really a Guiding Light performance in how to hold the screen um but it was definitely reimagined as a Native American woman from a matriarch metr local like like very uh woman loving woman supportive society and how um it's really kind of wonderful that this history that excluded native women from being lady leading ladies in the golden age in the 30s 40s 50s um now it's you know it's it's wonderful to have this moment of all of these beautiful native women on screen playing these characters and it's kind of sad you think about all of these Generations where we could have been seeing that oage women native women especially at the time we conduct ourselves a certain way and it's really perfect for this kind of this kind of story really um and this kind of Storytelling one of the things um I will say that both you and Olivia did was bringing such a regality to the performance I felt like of anything that I saw come over it was how she carried herself with an air despite what others around her may have sort of seen that um and Leo your character Earnest I do think earnestly not to do the pun at the very beginning notices that and that is what he is trying to you know very down bad sort of like woo her with I loved hearing how much that sort of playful chemistry that you guys have in that first car ride was what you and Lily actually developed on set and was more of a sort of moment of extending the scene and improvisation that we really got to seeing it and I would love for you to talk about how you were able to live in Earnest that way and sort of like show that side of this character because for everything that happens in the rest of the film if that doesn't feel true it it won't play as well so how carefully you sort of made those moments even though they were sort of inspired on set through a lot like the idea of you guys in that moment just living in the in improvisation but it was still like this very important scene for the characters later on in the story like you had to get it right but it was still something spontaneous that happened on set wasn't as spontaneous it wasn't you didn't just say you know Indian I heard that was an impr was a lot of discussion between that was a I mean I maybe Mis maybe misremembered but there was a lot of discussion and we did reshape that scene based upon things that we'd found along the way yeah well what did you find it and where Did you sort of find that sort of flirtatious moment because it's literally one of my favorite moments in it I felt it was so authentic and and yeah like again it was cute I like T she was making fun of them well I mean uh particularly that scene I believe the the line the uh the handsome devil what is the line How does it go um I don't I don't know what you said but it must be Indian for handsome devil that was your idea was your idea but I mean in shaping we knew that this entire the entire movie and the entire structure of the narrative uh was reliant on This Love Story working I mean there was a dramatic shift from an earlier draft which sort of highlighted the work of of of Tom white from the FBI coming into Osage territory doing forensic investigation and when we shifted it to the dynamic of the this household which was in an oage household with a with a white man and an oage woman and this man simultaneously being responsible for eradicating her bloodline it was it was almost impossible to believe that this was a true story um and that was what was so shocking about it she she talked early about Olivia De havland and and the ays but my real my my real inspiration Was A Place in the Sun to see and going back to the 40s to seeing a sort of corrupt Twisted love story and if something like that could work but this progressed on and on with the both of us during our our research process to to Really delve into the truth about Ernest and and and Molly and that began with speaking with the Osage community and a lot of them insisting that there was a real connection a real love there um and you know he was simultaneously doing both things at the same time both things can exist simultaneously he had this sort of mental control over by his father figure hail um but it all stemmed from these few scenes in the original draft where you know I saw this man confessing to the woman that he loved that he was a part of eradicating her entire family and it gave me this uh the strangest emotional feeling and I said how could this story even exist that began Marty and I began having conversations and we you know we the whole Balancing Act of this movie then became making this relationship believable and work and one thing that I do remember being purely improvised that was brilliant um that kind of went to this Dynamic the the scene where you know the first date scene that ends with the rainstorm um that one had originally ended with Molly basically drinking Ernest under the table um but the community didn't feel like that was Molly you know they said Molly would have enjoyed a glass of whiskey or like sipped it or whatever but she wasn't known for being somebody who could handle liquor like her sister Anna for example um so that changed based upon a story and you know a lot of these improvisations that we did find we did because we had spent so much time in the community and hearing about what this Dynamic would have been and like honestly it's one that I've seen a lot growing up and uh we talked about just this sort of Regal self-possessed woman and the man who kind of lives to crack that shell a little bit and make her laugh but in that scene when we rewrote wrote it it was based on Wilson pip sten's grandmother Rose who used to you know sit when a rainstorm came through Palms open blanket on in like a very prayerful way um very slow you know just be still way uh Leo had the great improvisation to kind of show what that constant Dynamic and contrast between these two characters which I think was really the heart of their chemistry it's part of a lot of people's chemistry a lot of relationships sustains a lot relationships is that constant like check and balance of each other but yeah I loved your improvisation in that one it's like yeah all the rain maybe it'll be good for the crops it's like just what I say just be still I no I love that um and again it's it's even in this moment seeing you guys here also congratulations um the film has already garnered just this morning a new bash of critic's choice nominations as well as gold nominations um I will ask you a little bit about this one Leo because I was there for when Once Upon a Time in Hollywood premiered at can I was there for this film when it premiered at can but for you I have to feel this particular experience of bringing this film um to audiences has been unique in your in your career obviously ret teaming with barttin soresi every moment like that you feel like you're adding into the cannon of film history but for you what has been so particular about this experience um that you'll maybe take going forward with some of your other projects because I you've talked very eloquently about how you felt this this story was not only one that needed to be told but more importantly that you wanted to make sure you guys got it right and obviously with these accolades it seems like folks are agreeing it's look I needless to say I've done uh if you're speaking specifically about working with Mr scorsi I've we've done a few biopics together based in in um Real History this had a a whole new level of responsibility and in in my opinion uh a lot of things could have been up for our own interpretation or our own viewpoint on how to tell the story but we knew you know based you know based on how important this was historically that this was a sort of lost you know very dark chapter in American history that we needed to tell this story correctly and that mean meant we needed to listen and that was our respon responsibility not only to after reading the book and delving through all the all the great research that David Grant did in the book we needed to go to the oage community and hear their perspective on this story you know I know not only speaking for myself but you know there were moments with Marty onet where I looked at him and he said I feel this story in my in my bones I feel this incredible responsibility to tell this correctly and especially after you know doing research and looking back in history as Lily mentioned early earlier you know from a native perspective how Hollywood has portrayed these stories in the past this was an incredibly sensitive one there it's generational the the oage are still affected by uh by by this moment history and uh we we just knew it was our job and our responsibility to listen and get their perspective and a lot of a lot of those meetings and working with l really shaped and there was you know after we did the second version it reshaped it again and it it became the movie that you see there today I love that um going to the audience um we have a first question for the both of you and I'll start with you Lily the Dynamics of your character's relationships is so complicated and drastically evolving as the film goes on how much time did you get to know each other before the filming and how was that preparation for your characters we didn't have a whole lot I mean extracurricularly uh we met and he invited me to dinner so we could just break the ice and then after that we had took several Community meetings together and um it was really it was really incredible actually walking into a community that had no idea of who we were as individuals but knew who we were there to play and immediately Community kind of started treating us and regarding us as those characters it's not like you know not like in a very specific like we're only going to call you Ernest Molly they weren't like doing that kind of directing but just the way that us taking these meetings together hearing about who these people were and hearing it from oage just meeting after meeting I think that I don't know it's almost like I don't want to compare it to what like feeling like the marriage was like arranged or whatever but it's almost like this couple was spelled out for us by the community and we were by the community kind of cast into those roles as it was being explained so I think even though we were there kind of you know in some ways fact finding things that maybe weren't in the book or in ways just hearing stories from people and um for me really observing just ways to integrate everybody was saying what the really the oral tradition of the place has said about this whole period of time and these two characters so I think we as we were building our characters individually we were also as we were taking these meetings together building what the dynamic may have been as this couple and when um when we started the work we weren't I mean I felt like I feel like a lot of the time we were in a bit of a freef fall we weren't we weren't certain that this Dynamic was going to function on screen the way that it clearly did in reality it's just it is so impossible and those early few weeks as we're capturing footage as we're exploring these scenes as you know some of these scenes we shot you know a variety of different ways you know different levels of Suspicion and Molly different levels of complicity and earnest different levels of real love of um of feigning love different levels of what that manipulation was and it was actually kind of a really fun acting exercise and kind of reminded me of being in school again where you're just given text without any any context you're just given lines and text and then you're the one who imbus it so that was really fun our first week we had one scene you know that we bent backwards like moved around this way tried it this way inverted it but as as those scenes and that footage and all of those possible dynamics that we were testing because we knew we were going to find it as we were going um Marty was working with Thelma the whole time felma is getting footage as Marty's turning it in and her notes are coming back not in real time because it's film you know it takes a minute but felma could see and knew as she was piecing the story together and we were solving this big puzzle of what this Dynamic really was for her what worked every time was when the love was genuine you know just as the community said you know just as Earnest maintained until the day that he died it was um and yeah when we were taking these meetings we since there are really no living people that knew Molly uh she passed away in 1936 certainly people didn't see the inside of this marriage so we kind of started looking to the legacy of who they were in um stories of how their kids were both cowboy and Elizabeth the children were described as being very funloving um they they spent a lot of time together they took care of each other um Cowboy would do something outlandish and Goofy and maybe a little bit Brash and the the canned thing from lesy was oh Cowboy it was just like they had that Dynamic that kind of informed I think what the parents maybe would have been um and I mean funloving people you you you suspect that they must have had a very funloving childhood like those personalities that are nurtured and formed in early stages of development and just the fact that they stayed close and didn't like separate um Cowboy even stayed close with Ernest even after the trial even after his mother passed away Ernest moved back to oage Country he showed up at Community doings people were aware people have memory of him coming to Gatherings and sitting in the back and staying removed and quiet but still constantly kind of Haunting the place um Cowboy would be with a group of people with his family with his friends and then get a little bit quiet excuse himself you know sorry excuse me I got to go pick up dynamite was the nickname he gave his dad and go pick him up and visit with his Dad he maintained that relationship well into his life so all of those all those bits of evidence tell you that there was something real in this family in this relationship so then I mean that was a pretty clear path for me um I always had to find some blind spot Molly would have had that Ernest could have hide could have hidden in and a lot of that had to do with sense of self as an oage woman had to do with um his intelligence and how much credit I gave him um and always I mean and or Earnest hear what you want to hear um and then also how um how much suspicion would be cast on to hail because hail had this presence in the community for such a long time it's like he had a huge Ranch and even though he was a friend of the O age and like prided himself in becoming fluent and just like really in a lot of ways appropriated in oage identity but did so in such a paternalistic you know he called himself King like he he applied that sort of hierarchical like Royal system that didn't exist in oage country he made himself King of the Osage which um you know there were oage at his funeral even after the trial after all of this people believe like he had enough people manipulated into believing that he never could have done this so any suspicion that was there you know you let it go yeah or you direct it at him or you feel like you have nowhere to go and then by the time it gets to that really dire Point Molly's mind is you know it's taken from her really um but anyways what about you sir was there anything in those like early meetings maybe those Community meetings when you guys were first sort of finding the characters that you because there wasn't a lot known about Earnest and there wasn't as much um there wasn't as many people I guess that um could speak to maybe a lot of what he said because again he kind of maintained something uh he maintained how much he loved Molly and didn't really talk about everything so how did you sort of find maybe those hidden parts of the character surprisingly for a a story and a occurrence that was was a hundred years old I felt like there was a lot um uh as I stated before you know this is this is generational and it they they're Generations that have been were affected by the oage rainet ter and and a lot of it stemmed from our initial research and looking into the testimony of the trial I remember the moment we were talking about uh you know uh Ernest up on S but there was no mention of Rita and when the house exploded and and I remember looking into her eyes and she was overwhelmed with sadness and then we started to deep dig deeper into uh you know a lot of that testimony in the trial which was a firsthand account of you know of what of what Ernest admitted that he did then I read a lot of his writing which was almost illegible in some cases it felt like he couldn't even form a sentence he couldn't even he definitely couldn't spell I got to speak to a direct descendant who was still in O Oklahoma drove sort of two hours away to a ranch and this was a niece who was in the room with him while he was talking about um you know the occurrence that happened uh and and that coupled with the fact that I actually got to see some film footage video footage of Ernest in his 90s that talking about Molly and you know the one quote he said is she was a good one she was a good one and I besides all of that I felt like the entire Community had their take on this relationship this is a story that wasn't talked about a lot um I I would imagine for Generations but everyone had their sort of deep understanding of these two people and who they were even if they hadn't met them on a on a personal level um so again you know uh we we developed This Love Story very much based on um on those stories on those stories and um strangely enough I I I felt like I had more than enough to work with to create Ernest as a character no and like I said earlier I've said this many times but we were there a hundred years later after the uh the the Tulsa Massacre 100 years later after the you know the beginning of the oage reign of terror 100 years later where with the flower Moon came out there we were in 2021 shooting this movie and it felt like this sort of existential moment and this great responsibility that we had to to tell this story with as much truth as we possibly could yeah incredible we only have time I think for one more but this is actually I think an interesting one um this is for both of you again um what was something unexpected that you learned about each other um while working on the this process and Leo I'll start with you unexpected well I knew uh after our initial meeting how incredibly intelligent she was but the ability to uh and I've also said this before too she really inhabited the soul of Molly often times she came on set and it felt like the presence of Molly was there but you were talking earlier about you know improv and improv isn't something uh it can happen this way where something you know by the grace of something more Divine just drops upon you and you come up with a magical idea these things do happen and we've seen them in cinema history I could list a few but oftentimes they have a lot of thought that are put into them beforehand and she came up with so many uh amazing moments and Dynamics the whole notion of me being the trickster the coyote which was a prevalent theme in something that really shaped the entire narrative and and the entire relationship of these two characters was all her idea and the Dynamics between you know how these two interacted I mean we it was it was amazing the amount of texture she brought to not only her performance but the entire structure of of the movie and shaping the movie that you see today I love that and D if I yeah that's really sweet um if I have to say one of those great moments of divine inspiration you're cut hand on the set of Django like nobody could have planned and we get to live forever with that Cinema so thank you sir uh Lily what about you what was the surprising aspect of working with Leo on set how incredibly generous he is I mean as a human being as an actor um it's it's intimidating walking into this group of creators it's intimidating being the new kid on the Block the you know the self-doubting part of your mind and I think a lot of people have to work through this the impostor syndrome feelings the feeling that like you're not going to get it right or that's you know and all of it was just so easy to get around because he's so patient he's so generous he's so committed to this film I mean he told me the first week how much this film meant to him and I could see that immediately and yeah just the amount of you know the amount of space I was given the amount of encouragement I was given um and that continues you know it's like he's is one of the most generous people I've met in my life I mean it's true it's it's sweet super true it's like you have um I don't know you're blessed you're blessed with a lot of wonderful things and you're very very eager and Keen to distribute it and share it and you know that goes for him as a person and him as an actor you know we are our art so well I really appreciate it again congratulations on all the accolades and all of the Just incredible audiences have just been raving for this one I hopefully we'll see you guys throughout award season not hopefully we know now we'll see you we'll see you going thank you so much thank you and I want to remind everyone that killers of a flower moon is available for voting in the categories that was nominated the Globes and the CCA thank you very much great questions thank you

Channel: MovieZine

Views: 266,995

Keywords: film, moviezine

Id: RfcscYyA7M0

Length: 28min 47sec (1727 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 18 2023