Lily Gladstone has had quite a year – and it’s only June. In addition to winning the Golden Globe for Best Actress (among a slew of other awards) and receiving an Oscar nomination for her role in Killers of the Flower Moonthe Native American actress also starred in a Hulu limited series and served on a Cannes jury.
But it’s Gladstone’s latest project, Fancy dancewhich opens in select cinemas on Friday and will be available on Apple TV+ from June 28, kicking off this string of high-profile successes.
“My year actually started in January [2023]when Fancy dance premiered in advance at Sundance Killers of the Flower Moon,” Gladstone, Blackfeet/Nimíipuu, told Yahoo Entertainment. “I knew I was saying goodbye to my indie cred a bit that year, so it was nice to get started on a film that was so close to my heart.”
Fancy dance, directed by Erica Tremblay, of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation, stars Gladstone (who uses they/them pronouns) as Jax, a woman on the Seneca-Cayuga Reservation in Oklahoma who cares for her niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson ) takes care of. ), after the girl’s mother goes missing. When Child Protective Services takes Roki from Jax to live with her white grandparents, Jax and Roki go on a road trip, hopefully finding answers along the way.
The film addresses not only the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women, but also other indigenous issues such as poverty and adoption policies. What’s different here, though, is that it’s told from the Indigenous perspective of the Indigenous director, writers and stars.
“When you see a true crime case surrounding an Indigenous issue or cause, often it’s the white cop, the white savior who comes in and solves the case. And you see just a tiny sliver of the actual lived lives of the indigenous people that the case revolves around,” Tremblay told Yahoo Entertainment. “So Miciana [Alise], my co-writer, and I wanted to do the exact opposite of that. We’re really centering this story around the two Indigenous women who are at the heart of this film.
Gladstone said the high-profile film is by Martin Scorsese Killers of the Flower Moon has helped create a hunger among global audiences for more indigenous stories.
“Murderers I think there was a kind of space carved out in what the audience wanted to see. They wanted more of that,” Gladstone said. “They wanted more of it [Osage protagonist] Mollie’s experience. They wanted more of the experience of her community from an inside-out perspective.”
Gladstone said participating in the awards circuit was “a great opportunity to raise awareness and talk about it Killers of the Flower Moonthe performances of the Indigenous actors in it, and to truly witness and experience firsthand how an audience falls in love with an Indigenous woman.
That fame, Gladstone added, paved the way Fancy dancethat, like Murderersis being distributed by Apple TV+ – that is, following a vocal campaign and op-ed from Tremblay highlighting the challenges Indigenous filmmakers face in getting their work distributed.
“People who got the chance to see Fancy dance in that crazy year and a half he would constantly talk about how those two films really contextualize each other and actually need to be seen together,” Gladstone said. “How what you desire in one is given to you in the other.”
This also applies to the widespread introduction of Fancy dance a step forward in kicking down the door blocking Indigenous representation on screen? After all, the numbers in Hollywood are historically dismal. According to a USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study that specifically highlighted the importance of Gladstone’s role in this Killers of the Flower Moon99% of the top-grossing films from 2007 to 2022 “contain zero Native American female-identified speaking characters.”
“We’re just getting started,” Gladstone said, without taking credit alone. “I think a lot of people are falling for it. I think I had a big platform because of the immensity of Martin Scorsese and that movie.”
Tremblay also said she doesn’t want to take credit for the questionable shift either.
“I guess I don’t necessarily think about it that way because I feel like all my mentors and so many people that I look up to are the ones breaking down the door and I’m just kind of in their tailwind, hanging in there,” said Tremblay, who also directed episodes of the critically acclaimed series Reservation dogs. “I’m so grateful to be part of this moment as we see Indigenous representation grow in Hollywood.”
Deroy-Olson, who belongs to Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in and the Ebb and Flow First Nations, said she was “grateful” to embody the kind of character she rarely saw in the media growing up.
“It was great to step into that because I grew up without a lot of representation in the media. I couldn’t look at the TV and say, that’s me,” she told Yahoo Entertainment.
“So the fact that I get to be part of moving that representation forward, especially for such a young Indigenous audience, they can look at Fancy dance and say, that’s me,” Deroy-Olson added, “and the fact that they get to see such a strong and proud character, I’m so grateful to be a part of that.”
When it comes to a major shift in the industry, in a year that has seen Gladstone’s historic wins and nominations, along with arguably more Indigenous-led projects like Fancy danceTremblay said she has been “guarding the optimism.”
“I am hopeful that when these major studios and companies talk about their commitment to inclusivity and diversity, I am hopeful that they will follow through on those promises,” she said. “But I think one thing’s for sure, we’re not going backwards, you know. We are not going back.”
