Lily Gladstone on why Killers of the Flower Moon and Fancy Dance should be seen together
The actor explains how Killers of the Flower Moon opened the door for Fancy Dance in a major way
Before Lily Gladstone's star-making turn in Killers of The Flower Moon, she was already making waves with her 2023 Sundance hit, Fancy Dance.
Both films premiered to critical acclaim within months of each other, but Hollywood jumped on the opportunity to distribute the Martin Scorsese film while Fancy Dance co-writers Erica Tremblay and Miciana Alise struggled to find distribution for their project.
In an interview with Q's Tom Power, Gladstone says she wants to use her newfound fame to redirect attention back to Fancy Dance because she believes the two films should be seen together. "They contextualize each other," she explains. "One is stronger because of the other. That was the feedback of people who were on the festival circuit and watching these two films together."
Killers of The Flower Moon tells the tragic true story of the 1920s Osage murders in Oklahoma, while Fancy Dance is a fictional, modern-day drama set on the Seneca-Cayuga Nation Reservation in Oklahoma. The story follows a woman named Jax (Gladstone) who becomes responsible for her niece, Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson), after her sister goes missing.
Gladstone says audiences were looking for more of her character, Mollie, in Killers of The Flower Moon. The film faced criticism from people like Osage language consultant Christopher Côté, who told The Hollywood Reporter that he wanted to see the story told from Mollie's perspective — though Scorsese wouldn't have been the right director to bring that vision to the screen.
"People were, without knowing it, asking for Fancy Dance," Gladstone tells Power. "They wanted more time spent on an Osage perspective in [Killers of the Flower Moon]. And it's like, 'Well, here's this film, [Fancy Dance].'"
The fact that these two films have Gladstone in common is something that she considers to be "a gift from the film gods," because now she can help bring Fancy Dance to a wider audience.
"It's a beautiful thing that these two happened so close in conjunction with each other," she says. "Fancy Dance has always been just a little step ahead of Killers in my life. I read that script at the end of July 2020, I read the second draft in early September 2020, and I got my first meeting with Martin Scorsese for Killers of The Flower Moon in October 2020. So it's like the two have always been in lockstep with each other. One opened the door for the other in a major way."
Fancy Dance is out on Apple TV+ on June 28.
The full interview with Lily Gladstone is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Lily Gladstone produced by Glory Omotayo.
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