“Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Fancy Dance” are like sisters on Lily Gladstone’s resume.
Both shot in Oklahoma, both about families grieving for relatives, they give the Oscar-nominated actress perspective about a crucial time in her career.
“We shot ‘Fancy Dance’ exactly a year after I was wrapping ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ very close to the same place,” Gladstone says. “Those films have kind of been within a heartbeat of each other for a long time.”
"Fancy Dance" co-star Isabel DeRoy-Olson, left, says it has been exciting to watch Lily Gladstone's career pop over the last year.
Two months before meeting with Martin Scorsese about “Flower Moon,” she read Erica Tremblay’s script for “Fancy Dance.”
“So, it was like, one takes a step forward and then takes a beat and then the other takes a step forward. They’ve been in this weird sort of lockstep for a long time.”
Coming now, after the hoopla surrounding “Flower Moon” (and a limited series, “Under the Bridge,” and a spot on the Cannes Film Festival jury), “Fancy Dance” is an ideal way for new fans to see the kind of films Gladstone made before Hollywood came calling.
In it, she plays the sister of a missing woman. Determined to reunite her niece with her sister, she decides to search on her own, hoping to piece together clues gathered along the way.
Airing on AppleTV+, “Fancy Dance” came together in two years – a quick turnaround in Hollywood, according to Tremblay, who both wrote and directed the film.
Lily Gladstone plays a woman searching for her sister in "Fancy Dance," a look at contemporary Native American lives.
The two had worked together on a short called “Little Chief” and Tremblay asked Gladstone if she might be willing to work with her on a feature.
“I just knew from watching all of Lily’s films and having worked with her on little, cheap (short films) just how talented and wonderfully beautiful a human she is,” Tremblay says. “So, I was grateful that Lily said yes and, hopefully, we get to do more things together in the future.”
Isabel DeRoy-Olson, who plays Gladstone’s niece in “Fancy Dance,” told her it was cool to watch her co-star’s trajectory – “from the Lily that she knows to the Lily that everybody suddenly knows.”
Isabel DeRoy-Olson, left, and Lily Gladstone go on the road in "Fancy Dance," looking for a missing relative.
A long road
Gladstone says her success and the interest in Native American filmmakers isn’t as sudden as it may seem. “This has been a ‘rising tide lifting all ships’ thing for a while,” the 37-year-old Montana native says. “The fact that it’s risen to the level where you have filmmakers like Martin Scorsese telling these stories and telling them from a different angle than you’re used to seeing is indicative of the work that (director) Sterlin Harjo has been doing for generations, making really solid films that people are connected to and seeing dynamic, stellar indigenous talent in difficult, wonderful roles.
“It just feels like I’m part of something that’s growing and way bigger than any one person could be. I just happened to be hitched to a particularly culture-shifting, prolific, legendary filmmaker.”
When “Killers of the Flower Moon” hit theaters last fall, critics scrambled for superlatives to describe Gladstone’s performance. She won the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild Award and was the first actress of Native American descent to be nominated for an Oscar.
Lily Gladstone.
First things first
Even though “Flower Moon” looked like it shot Gladstone out of a cannon, “Fancy Dance” premiered before it – at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023. “I was actually really, really thankful that ‘Fancy Dance’ had a chance to premiere before us because I was joking with Marty and Leo the whole time we were making it that I wasn’t letting them take my indie cred just yet,” Gladstone says. “I was holding on to it for every last second.”
Coming to a wide audience now, “Fancy Dance” feeds a hunger for Native stories.
“Flower Moon,” Gladstone says, “showed audiences what they didn’t know they were missing. A lot of the feedback I got was people wanted to see more of the Osage narrative. These two films speak to each other; they exist in the same world 100 years apart. Those who’ve seen both feel like these narratives belong together and I think that’s true.”
Consulting Osage Nation members was essential to understanding their characters, according to Lily Gladstone, center, and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Shaping views
Now making several films, Gladstone says she has always felt “my art has gone to serve a social purpose. There’s a quote that struck me – ‘art is not a mirror you hold up to reality…it’s more a hammer with which to shape it.’ I feel like there’s a definite responsibility because being a storyteller, you’re breathing life into something.
“I remember how exciting it was when (‘Star Wars’) ‘Rogue One’ came out and Diego Luna was the lead character. You’re hearing a Spanish-speaking man leading this major franchise…that’s revolutionary. While there’s a responsibility when you’re telling stories like this, (there’s a need) to have artists who have the lived experience, to bring you into that perspective and to really flesh it out in a very compassionate and humanizing way.”
Like Luna, Gladstone wants to do films that are “purely fun.” “In doing so, that, by itself, is a revolutionary act. A little Native girl who wants to be an actor knows that she can take a rom-com, that she doesn’t have to play somebody who’s grieving or overcoming trauma. You can just be a joyful girl falling in love.”
Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone plays a police officer in "Under the Bridge."
While Gladstone’s career is certainly at a high pitch these days, she knows there will be times when scripts aren’t stacking up.
“You reach a point in your career where you develop a filmmaking family and you realize if you’re going to have work, you’re going to have to create an advocate for yourself. ‘Fancy Dance’ was the only project on my horizon before Marty called and I knew that one was going to take a couple of years to find funding.”
Working with independent filmmakers is still a big part of Gladstone’s life. “Now, what’s nice, is because my name did a little bit, we’re getting a lot more interest in the things we want to do.
“I still feel like I’m in some weird margins (of the business),” she says. “I’m lucky enough to get to work with people I want to work with. But I still work in an independent sphere with filmmakers I’ve become dear friends with…and we keep collaborating on projects.”
