WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1516 - Lily Gladstone

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Lily Gladstone knows that people project all manner of emotions and intentions onto her when she gives a performance. Lily and Marc talk about why that happens, including the reaction to her Oscar-nominated performance in Killers of the Flower Moon. They also talk about the time Lily was thinking about giving up acting just as Kelly Reichardt cast her in Certain Women, why it was so important for her to play an incarcerated mother on Reservation Dogs, and why she believes every role she takes becomes an Indigenous role, regardless of the original intent. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney+. 18-plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Lock the gates! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast welcome to it i don't know when i started saying that but it seems to have stuck. How's everybody doing?

What day is today? It's Monday. I guess it would be the 26th of February. If you're listening to this the day it's released, I hope that things are okay. I think okay is good. Okay is the new good. Fine is always whatever. But okay. I think okay is good. Okay is the new good. Fine is always whatever, but okay. I hope you're okay. I am in New Mexico, hence the slight difference in sound quality. I'm in a hotel room in New Mexico. I'm realizing now that my chair is squeaky, so I'm going to have to sit very still. I'm here, as per usual, to sort of spend time with my father, who is slowly detaching.

Maybe I should sit on the couch. This chair is a bit much. Hold on. Let me change chairs and see if this one will work any better. But I came out here to deal with some stuff and to deal with him back in the home state. And it remains a bit heavy, but interesting, and it's good to see him. There is a sadness to it all, but I'm starting to feel that that is just the way this all kind of winds down for any of us on some level. But I don't want to bum you out out of the gate.

Let me tell you that today I talked to Lily Gladstone. She's our final Oscar nominee that has kind of come through the garage this year. She's nominated for Best Actress for her performance in Killers of the Flower Moon. She won the SAG Award last night, and I was very excited to talk to her, but very nervous. I don't know if I am clear with you people about why this show remains what it is and why, if you still listen and each conversation, despite me being a constant, is engaging and interesting, is that it has to be for me as well. is engaging and interesting is that it has to be for me as well. And there is a type of dread that I experience before any of these conversations, like any of you would have heading into a conversation with somebody that you don't really know, but you've heard about, or that you want to meet, but you only know their work, or you've heard people tell you stories about them or whatever, but there is a kind of a very human and very present anxiety or nervousness about entering these conversations because I don't really know how it's going to go. I never really know. I don't ever know. And because of the way I do it, which is try to engage and get a real groove going and figure out what I'm

interested in about them that maybe they haven't revealed necessarily or just a way to get them to a place where they can speak from who they are. And I'm not going to say exhausting because it's not exhausting, but that's the process. That for someone like Lily, I know it's, uh, I'm not going to say exhausting cause it's not exhausting, but that's the process that for someone like Lily, I know it's going to happen, you know, a couple of weeks ahead of time. And then my brain, I don't know how your brain works, but this is the same with, uh, with everything that I do that it just starts kind of slowly working it, you know, every day kind of, kind of thinking about it, kind of like imagining how it would go, figuring out

what interests me, figuring out what does she as a person have in there and how do I sort of engage with that in the small amount of time that I'm going to have with her. And it's a process, but there's never a time with any conversation I have with anyone even if I've known the person for years where I'm like there's going to be no problem I mean sometimes with comics yeah but it still is what it is you still got to figure out something to do and they and it's it's it's my it's my profession my job but it's also my passion but it is a it it takes up there's a process to it and it's an internal process and it's an emotional process that I kind of have to work towards it. Sometimes when I know someone's coming up in a month, I'm like, well, you got to make sure you have your brain kind of wrapped around the work that this person is here for not not the thing that they're here promoting or why i necessarily

got this person but why are they what they are as an artist and where does that come from and what of their work moved you the most or or or made you realize that they were uh an amazing creative person. And for, with Lily, it's interesting because the first time I saw her, I had no idea who she was. The first time I saw her was in the Kelly Reichardt movie, uh, certain women. And I was astounded. And I talked to Reichardt about this and I was astounded by her performance. I, it was beyond, it was otherworldly and I had no idea who she was but I could not forget and and haven't forgotten and will always remember her performance in that in terms of how she handled it or how she you know dealt with the character that she was playing in that and the humanity of it was was fucking mind-blowing to me and then she's in

First Cow in a smaller and a different role. But that's another Kelly Reichardt film. But Certain Women, that was, for me, I was like, oh my God. And I believe, and I talked to her about it, that's where Scorsese saw her and thought about casting her for Killers of the Flower Moon. But also, there was this other movie that she did just a couple years ago called um unknown

country and i didn't know anything about it i heard nothing about it i don't know if any of you saw it but i was like you know this is new i mean she must have filmed this shortly after or just before killers of a flower moon but it's an indie And it's about a woman's journey as a native person in terms of her identity. And it's a very poetic movie. And it's kind of a brilliant movie. And I watched it and I'm like, well, this is where it's at. This is where I begin my conversation with her and my understanding of her, because this seems like a very personal movie. And it was that work, the, all the work, you know, outside of Killers of a Flower Moon, where I was like, this is where this conversation lives. And, and it's like,

it's a slow and enlightening process for me. I guess, you know guess if your job is constantly enlightening to you or broadening your understanding and appreciation of things, it's a fucking gift and I'm grateful for it. So that's happening today. Another thing I want to mention, which is also very exciting and was also a fairly nerve-wracking, exciting and was also a fairly nerve-wracking, not nerve-wracking, but I put a lot into these things, man. But I talked to Carol Burnett last week, Carol Burnett. And she's 90 years old and she's sharp as a tack. And I drove up to Montecito in the torrential downpour and flooding to talk to one of the great geniuses of comedy. And we have to hold the episode until later in March. So it'll line up with the premiere of the new show she's in called Palm Royale. You know, that's also has Allison Janney in it and Kristen Wiig. It's kind of a comedy tour de

force. I watched the whole season. I enjoyed it. But we are holding it, but I just wanted you to know that I did it and I wanted you to give you a little taste of the interview. So this is me and Carol Burnett for a few. You had a pretty good friendship

with Lucy, right? Yes. How did that work? Did she see you and realize that you... She came to see me in Mattress. Okay. The second night. And I was so nervous. She came backstage. me in mattress the second night. And I was so nervous.

She came backstage. She called me kid because she was 22 years older. And she said, a kid, if you ever need me for anything. She was so sweet. So about four years later, I was going to do a special. Only if I could get a big guest star. So Bob Banner, who was the executive, said, call Lucy. And I said, I don't want to bother her.

You know, it was years ago. All she can do is say, I'd love to, but I'm busy. I got her on the phone, and I said, you're doing great, kid. What is it? What's going on? I was fumphering. I said, you know, I'm going to do it. But I know you're busy. She said, when do you want me?

So my husband, Joe, was producing our show. Yeah. Okay. And so Lucy was a guest. And we had a break. And we went over to the farmer's market to have a little bite to eat. Oh, right there at CVS? Yeah.

To eat before orchestra rehearsal. So she's sitting there. And she's having a whiskey sour. She's going to knock on one back. She said, you know, kid, it's great you've got Joe to be the producer. She said, because when I was married to the Cuban, because they were divorced by then, she said, he did everything. He took care of the scripts. He took care of the lighting. He took care of the lighting.

He was the one who invented the three camera system. And he was everything. So that when I came in on Monday, everything was perfect. All I had to do was be silly, great Lucy. Then we got a divorce. And she said, now I'm going to be Lucy Carmichael and do those other, the Lucille Ball show, the Lucy show. She says, so I go and I read the script, and she said, it's terrible.

It stank. There wasn't Desi there who would have fixed it. And she said, I didn't know what to do. I thought, oh, my God. So she called lunch, and she said, I went into my office, and I said, I thought, I've got to be like Desi. I've got to be tough. I've got to be.

So I went back, and I told them in no uncertain terms, I channeled Desi. And then she said, kid, and she took another drink. She said, and that's when they put the S on the end of my last name. All right. So that's something you can look forward to. It was, again, an honor just to, you know, I can't even, I don't know if I can really explain to you the emotions and the sort of zone that, you know, I drove up there to monitor. I'll talk about it when I do the episode. But, you know, just waiting in a hotel room in the pouring rain to talk to Carol Burnett. I mean, Carol Burnett, she was amazing and is still amazing. She is

acting at 90 in this show, but we'll talk more about it when that episode airs. All right, let's get you up to speed on tour dates if you're not. God knows I mentioned them enough. This week, I'm in Los Angeles at Largo on Wednesday, February 28th, and I'm at the Elysian Theater on Thursday, February 29th. Then next week, I'm in Portland, Maine at the State Theater on Thursday, March 7th. Medford, Massachusetts at the Chevalier Theater on Friday, March 8th. Providence, Rhode Island at the Strand Theater on Saturday, March 9th. Tarrytown, New York at the Tarrytown Music Hall on Sunday, March 10th. Atlanta, Georgia, I'm at the Buckhead Theater on Friday, March 22nd.

I have to check if they've added a show. Boise, Idaho, I'm at the Egyptian Theater on Saturday, March 23rd as part of Comedy Fort at Tree Fort Music Fest. Madison, Wisconsin at the Barrymore Theater on Wednesday, April 3rd. Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the Turner Hall Ballroom on Thursday, April 4th. Chicago at the Vic Theater on Friday, April 5th. Minneapolis at the Pantages Theater on Saturday, April 6th. Austin, Texas at the Paramount Theater on Thursday, April 18th as part of the Moon Tower Comedy Festival. You can go to wtfpod.com for tickets. All the links are there. And there's more dates coming. And again, I know I say this every couple of years,

but some part of me is winding down, people. I don't don't know i i i am 60 i hit 60 but like i've been working pretty much non-stop in one form or another uh and the as i've mentioned to you before even the podcast is the emotional and mental effort and energy it takes. This is the job. This is the work. I love it, but it's work, the comedy, all of it. And I don't vacation. Brendan and I never take a break. I don't know if you've noticed, but we've done a new show every Monday and Thursday since 2009. We're workers. I'm a worker. And there's no work that I sleep through. there's no work that I sleep through. There's no work that I autopilot. There's nothing in terms of any of the jobs I do in my life where I can just kind of show up and go through the emotions.

Not possible. I'm a little tired. We bring you new episodes of this show twice a week or on special occasions like last week three times. But we also have lots of things to take care of after the show airs. The episodes need to be archived and we need a way to play them on our site. We need a search function so you can find episodes. Then there's also my tour dates and ticket access and a way for you to subscribe to WTF Plus.

The secret is all of that gets handled easily because WTF.com is powered by Squarespace. Squarespace makes it easy to have all those features so we can update things whenever we want. With Squarespace, you can also set up your own Squarespace member areas to give premium access to your most devoted users. Also, the Squarespace video studio and the Squarespace email campaigns help you stay connected with your fans. And whether you sell physical or digital products, Squarespace makes it easy to start selling things online. Go to squarespace.com slash WTF for a free trial. And then don't forget to use offer code WTF when you're ready to launch.

That gets you 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash WTF, offer code WTF. I was very excited and intimidated and a bit nervous to sit down with Lily Gladstone. And it was great. I love her work. And it was really a privilege and a pleasure to talk to her. Lily is nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards. Killers of the Flower Moon is streaming on Apple TV+. And this is our conversation. Are you self-employed? Don't think you need business insurance? Think again. Business insurance from Zensurance is a no-brainer for every business owner because it provides peace of mind a lot

can go wrong a fire cyber attack stolen equipment or an unhappy customer suing you that's why you need insurance don't let the i'm too small for this mindset hold you back from protecting yourself zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just 19 per month visit zensurance today to get a free quote zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance. risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun.

A new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. So you're here. This is crazy. I know. I'm so excited to be here. I am. What's been going on? Are you tired? I think it would be weird if I wasn't. Yeah. Are you tired of fielding similar questions? I mean, only if I don't get to change my answers up a little bit. Got to mix it up?

Mm-hmm. I know because it's very weird when you do sort of develop a public narrative for yourself. And depending on who you're talking to, you're like, am I going to throw something new in here? Can I just ride this one out? It absolutely has to do with who you're talking to and your comfort level. Because there's just some things I know if I bring up, it's like, I'm not going to contextualize this for this person. Because they're barely listening. Or this audience or whatever.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I don't know. Because I was thinking about it before I talked to you. Like I imagine the – because I was thinking about your presence on screen and I've watched a lot of stuff. But I imagine you're one of these people that people just project an infinite amount of things onto. Well, good catch yeah absolutely i think it's maybe the kind of this open mama face because we all do that to like our moms anyway i just have that presence right but yeah i mean i mean i loved when he

had kelly reichert on i love her like that's when i first saw. I had no idea who you were or she was to a degree. But I had watched First Cow first. And, you know, I saw Wendy and Lucy a long time ago. But I'd watched First Cow, and I'm a big McCabe and Mrs. Miller fan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like her version of that. Absolutely. Almost.

You know, just the tone of it and everything. And you were in that. Almost. You know, just the tone of it and everything. And you were in that and it's a different character than the one you play in the Flowers of the... Killer Moon, is that? Killers of the Flower Moon. You're not the only person who does that.

That's a common one. I do it all the time. But the thing with Kelly is when I watch certain women and you were in it, I was completely sort of like, who the fuck is this person what is she doing what oh it's an honor that's how i feel when i see you on screen come

on who the fuck is this guy that's amazing come on but uh but yeah i mean i that the intensity of that character and just the uh the longing and the strange sort of, it wasn't even mild, but it was somehow an endearing obsession. Totally. Because it's just pure country, like isolation, you know? Yeah, yeah. Kelly talks about how even when she's writing in her studio or in her apartment for too long, she forgets how to interact with people.

When she goes back in society, she's like, oh, am I making eye contact too much? Am I like staring at this person? The self-consciousness yeah yeah yeah yeah but like when you're doing that how now is that she was really the first person that made you big it put you in big films right yeah how did that happen where were you i you know i had kind of not thrown in the towel on things but i had tried tried out Austin for a minute. I had an independent film out called Winter in the Blood that kind of created a filmmaking family for me, both in Montana and Austin, because one of the filmmakers was from there. Are you a lead in that? Yes.

It's a support. And that was the first one? Yeah, it was my first introducing credit. Austin? Yep. We shot it in Montana. But one of the filmmakers, Alex Smith, lived in Austin because he was teaching at UT Austin at the time. And there was a film incentive there. So I figured that was a good place to go.

But then some family issues brought me back north. And then I was managing a grant to show Winter in the Blood in reservation communities around Montana and take digital storytelling workshops. You got a grant for that? Mm-hmm. Oh, wow. They did. I just managed it. So I had just moved back to Montana.

I'd done a theater tour earlier that year. I was kind of— What do you mean? I went out with the University of Montana. Montana has an in-house professional theater repertory company, the Montana Repertory Theater. So like regional theater kind of thing? Yep.

What were you doing? I'd done The Miracle Worker. I was playing Kate Keller, Ellen Keller's mom. Oh, wow. The Miracle Worker. And just touring it to regional theaters? Yeah. To like, you know, perform for-

Yeah, not just theaters, but you know, like rural places around the United States. Oh, wow, yeah. High school gyms, old, old opera houses. It would just depend on- So was the intention educational? Kind Oh, wow. Yeah. High school gyms, old, old opera houses. It would just depend on. So was the intention educational? Kind of. Yeah.

I mean, it was also, you know, we were gaining our actors union, our actors equity points. Right. Because you have to do so many professional productions to join the union. And that one made me a union performer that year. That's an exciting moment, isn't it? It was cool. Yeah. Yeah.

It was. Got your card. Yep. Got my card. I'm a union performer that year that's an exciting moment it was cool yeah yeah it was got your card yep got my card i'm a union member it was wonderful and were you doing q and a's and stuff after kind of thing often yeah yeah a lot of the time and like what was the reaction to like theater in rural areas kind of like it was when i was a kid and we would get theater come around it's just like it's a breath of fresh air. It's something else to do. My first times on stage were when Missoula Children's Theater would come to our little reservation school and put on a play. And yeah, just there's a bustle around it. Yeah. The community turns out for it. This is when you were really young?

Missoula Children's Theater was, yeah. I was maybe six when I did my first play with them. Wow. Where were you living? This was in East Glacier, Montana, on the Blackfeet Reservation. Little four-room schoolhouse in East Glacier. Sixty kids, kindergarten through eighth grade school. I only know a couple people from Montana, but one of my best friends is from Montana.

Oh, no kidding. And he talks about this, like, just that schoolhouse. And his dad had sort of a bunch of land and they had cows. So he had to go deal with cows. And he's just got all these horror stories about coming upon dead cows, having to wake up at five in the morning. They surprise you. Like, I was shooting a Western in rural Montana. And we were like, oh, that house is kind of cool.

It's like, oh, there's a dead rotting cow inside of it inside the house yeah inside this old like farmer's house or this old like rancher's house that was kind of abandoned i you know i don't know a lot about cows but i like i've been vegan for like a year for not really ethical reasons health yeah yeah well just to try it there you go and uh my sensitivity to to all animals is kind of kind of heightened interesting you know and i when i see cows i'm like i know they're dumb but they they seem nice yeah they're cute first cow is a great one like that cow is so beautiful she's so pretty and you guys had a well you didn't work directly with the cow i never got to meet the cow cow was on set yep complaining in between takes I think she actually like kind

of developed a crush on John Magaro in that. Oh really? From what I've heard. Oh yeah? They had a very sweet little, they had a nice chemistry on screen. That's a sweet movie. It is. But okay, so you're on the reservation. Do you remember life there? Yeah. We moved away right when I was going into middle school. Oh oh so you were there for a while yep all my early childhood memories were pretty much formed there middle school and high school were in um in the city we'd moved to seattle but then i moved back to montana for college and stayed so it was so is that where you are sent folk uh uh not these days oh no not these days we still have our family home there We still have a parcel of land there

Oh really On the res Which is my dad's It's my dad's name And that'll become mine What's the situation there now On the res I mean

A little like res dogs Is it Yeah I mean That show has just had Such an impact On so many folks Because it's like We see ourselves

Oh it destroyed me i mean i couldn't like i couldn't get over it in that show oh thanks it was funny because i think he wrote that as sort of a full metal jacket takeoff like that character was supposed to be sort of this sergeant kind of guy but i i wanted to be in it and i know sterling and they put me in that so i just kind of made it yep whatever that guy was. But, you know, a very good friend of mine who spent a significant portion of his adolescence in a boy's home like that said that you nailed it. You were like exactly like his, I don't know what you call it, corrections officer maybe. Well, the ego of a guy, you know, in recovery that has this responsibility, like he still has to kind of like puff up, you know, but it's so shallow. Yeah.

Yeah. I had a real stretch for that one. That was a real. Yeah. I have a problem with acting because like I make all these choices, but then once you get in it, you're like, I'm just being me.

I'm just kind of being me. Just not talking as much and I'm not as freaked out. But it's so watchable. I mean, just so watchable. That whole show, you were great in it. That was like, that's like a heavy part. Yeah. Yeah. It was insane when I got the, when I got the sides, because the first episode that you see Hoagty and Migsie Pensineau wrote, and Migs and I go back to Missoula. We were both there at the same time. I hung out after college and just

stayed in Montana until really certain women started popping off. And then I went on the road for it and kind of stayed on the road. But yeah, Meg and Sterling both saw me do Winter in the Blood forever ago. They were two of the first people that took notice of me for what I could do. And when I got this scene like it just had everything in there that i want to do and it felt like it was written for me in a way because the uh incarcerated mom yeah yeah and it's just it's such a poignant thing to have this really profound spiritual healing moment take place in a prison because so many of our relatives are incarcerated it's like especially in the american west it's like the highest number

of people incarcerated in montana and north dakota south dakota like all these places that we grew up yeah our natives yeah and um to to play this woman who's essentially a healer you know a lot of a lot of healers are really sensitive to the world and sensitive people you know colonization hits you harder yeah well i think that's one of the things that you know like not that you necessarily are a designated representative of the native community but you know once people become more educated, which I think reservation dogs did, because the thing that struck me about it was that there is a groove of spirituality, humor, communication, and community that to most people is alien. We don't know what that really looks

like. Sure. So when I saw it, you know, after having seen, you know, a few native-driven movies in my life, I was like, this is a whole world that has its own everything. Yeah. And this is the first

we're really seeing it. Yeah. With a certain... And just how quickly audiences take to that and feel comfortable with it. It's like what we've been insisting for years. Yeah. Our stories, like, like you know you're told that they're too esoteric or they're not universal

enough but it's like bullshit because when people watch it they see something that feels so human and familiar and immediate and honest yeah and that's i mean that's what it is growing up on a res people are honest you know well yeah and like you're not judged for what for like material wealth that was a huge part of like the culture shock of moving to a suburb when i was in middle school when your identity is forming so much north of seattle really yep so did you feel that uh did you feel different yeah i mean I mean, were you treated differently? Yeah. Really?

It happened to be the year that Pocahontas had come out for Disney, too. So it was like all the little pot shots your classmates take at you. Can you paint with all the colors of the wind? Were they pot shots or were they curious? It was definitely a pot shot for one guy in particular. You remember that guy? I do, yeah. All the girls had a crush on that guy.

That guy. Oh, yeah. The asshole. Yep, the one who negs everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder what that guy? I do, yeah. All the girls had a crush on that guy. That guy. Oh, yeah, the neg. The asshole. Yep, the one who negs everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was his shit. Wonder what that guy's doing. It's always good to go back and check out where the assholes end up. Probably in sales.

Yeah, of course. Would be my guess. Frustrated in sales. In a horrible marriage. Who knows? Yeah. When I went back from my high school reunion, I was like, just to see how like fat and weird all the jocks got.

I was like, this is, I waited 25 years to go back to a reunion. Man, my 20 year reunion is this year. Are you going to go? You got to go. You know, it's being organized right now. I think it's going to happen in May, but my classes come back together to schedule an Oscars watch party

because they voted me most likely to win an Oscar. Which, from middle school, high school? From high school. Really? Yeah,

I've got like the little photo, me and Josh Ryder there doing our little American Gothic pose. He's holding one of those little men that you use in sculpture. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Well, that's silly. But I wouldn't go back until I had some success that was visible. I mean, it's pretty cool to walk in with an Oscar nomination

to your 20-year high school. Hell yeah. It's better than walking in and having people going, how's it working out, the acting? Exactly. And exactly you got to tell some story about a theater thing you did yeah somewhere else you know my 10 year reunion i think is when i got certain women now that i'm thinking about it so that would have

been fine too yeah that would have been fine except like you know then you'd have to bring the movie with you right because nobody Because nobody knows Kelly Riker. It's right here. Which is a crime that people don't know who Kelly Riker is. I know. The last movie was so funny. Mm-hmm. It was so funny.

Kelly is funny. I thought First Cow was funny. When I was watching it at New York Film Festival, I feel like I was kind of annoying. I mean, I got there late, so nobody knew I was in New York. Otherwise, I know I would have gotten, like, an invite and been, like, up front. But I kind of snuck in last minute and was in the balcony in the very back, and I was cracking up the whole time. And I could tell that I was annoying some of the people I was sitting around until, like, Kelly, like, called me out in the audience, and I called back. Then it was kind of fine that I was there. But well, what's weird about movies that deal with any sort of different race or ethnicity

is that, you know, the type of people that go to art movies or small movies are usually heavy hearted, liberal people. And they don't know when to laugh and they don't know if it's OK to laugh. So they're just sitting there in a knot and you know and knowing they're going to enjoy it no matter what they're not going to say anything bad about them right right right right right because it would look bad if they did that's right cultured if they did that's right yep but no that from giving people permission to laugh thing is um that's also a very indian thing i think because like when we talk about and that's one thing i love about res dogs totally

and you know i just encourage anybody to go back and re-watch Kelly Reichert's movies as comedies because they're hilarious. Yes. Don't take them so seriously. Otherwise, you're not going to enjoy it. It's like Chekhov. Well, the dynamic between you and Kristen Stewart was kind of hilarious. Right. The disconnect.

Yep. And that, you know, her self-centeredness had no sensitivity to what you were feeling at all, really. And just how much I hung on her. I know. The scene where you, like, just drive forever to sit outside where she works was so crazy. Yep. And, you know, just like, oh, hey, how's it going? Yeah, yeah.

Casual. Slept in my And, you know, just like, oh, hey, how's it going? Yeah, yeah. Casual. Slept in my car, you know. But, like, I think that something that is not your responsibility, but I think that is naturally carried by you as a performer is, and I don't know if weight is the right word for it, but the sort of gravity. Gravity, yeah, of your personal experience and the experience of native culture right in the sense that because when i watched um was it the unknown country oh thank you oh that's great i love that film i mean and it that seems like it was written for you i mean was written with me we were kind of improvving it as we were going really so yeah were a lot of them non-actors most of us yeah um me richard ray whitman who plays grandpa august

and then raymond lee who's like the love interest for lack of a better term just um in austin he's oh yeah yeah he's the lead of quantum leap oh really that's what's happened with ray's career that worked out for him did yeah and then. And then his friend, Allie. The four of us were SAG actors. Okay. Everybody else was playing themselves. The old lady at the dance hall? Yep. Flo.

Flo just passed away this last year. Yeah, but danced right up until the very end. Well, I hope that woman who owns the place doesn't get discouraged. I know. I know. It's so needed. Like those dance halls definitely are kind of going by the wayside. And most of the places that we shot at, sadly, have had to close because we shot a lot of that pre-COVID.

In Dallas? Dallas and South Dakota. Well, yeah. The Texas. The text is, well, the arc of it, and I guess the point I was trying to make was the gravity of a somewhat celebration of tradition and legacy, but the counterpoint to it is this like insane eternal grief. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So like to play that part in Unknown Country, that's a grief part all the way through.

100%. And you don't really realize it. But I imagine that the experience of loss in terms of, you know, the history of the culture is ever present. So that is something that is a type of foundation that is unique. Fully. Yeah. And I think that made Tana, the character that we created, her life really immense because it ties into her grandma that she just lost.

And we don't ever really expose much about her grandma's history. But when you open the suitcase at the end, eagle-eyed viewers might notice pictures of Haskell Indian School in there. So grandma had gone to a boarding school. Pictures of her at the end, that guiding photo of her like free with her long flowing hair. Yes. Kind of in a way that photo, while it was real in the narrative, also was a transcendence of her spirit, which is like kind of carried in at the end. Sure. The wind. Right.

Because the other photo that I pull out of the suitcase where you see her, she's got her short boarding school hair. Okay. So the story I'd constructed for her grandma was fully formed and one that I decided that the character of Tana wasn't fully aware of. So Tana was kind of adjacent to me in the sense that I was very close with my own grandma who was a boarding school survivor too. Really? I was one of her caretakers until her last days was real to a degree yeah i had grandma while we were filming that i only lost her last summer so we'd already filmed premiered all of it um and then my grandma passed away shortly after uh she did but she didn't remember it it's dementia yeah i'm dealing with that now

right i'm trying to put a positive spin on it. You know, my grandma was so good-natured about it. Like, got the right kind of medication, too, that her delusions would stay positive instead of, like, get fearful. That was a blessing toward the end of her life. What medication is that? Maybe my dad can give it to me. I don't remember. I will text my mom, and I'll let you know. Because it was really kind of changed the game.

She was just very joyful. Oh, that's good. And we could tell her the same jokes over and over again. Yeah, and they always work. It's a killer. Exactly. It's like you're doing a comics job. You're doing the new audience every time.

Exactly. My dad's favorite joke with her as she was aging was, hey, ma, you remember that thing I always tell you not to forget? And then she'd sit and think for a second, and the answer was always the same, no. She would crack up just at the irony of that. Well, I don't, like, it's nice that she had that, at least that ease to be happy. Like, unfortunately, my dad has never had that. So there's no going back to it. There's no place that he can return to where the joy would come out.

Maybe there's some little early childhood pocket that he can, like, crack into. Well, the thing I've realized about the dementia is that you have to let go of who they were at some point. And deal with what you're dealing with. And then it becomes kind of fun. Mm-hmm. Yep. Because it's always surprising. Yep.

And you really don't know what's going to come out of that. Especially when you buy into the delusions like you have to. Sure. Because you can't reason them out of it. Sure. It's like you guide them through it to where they're like feeling okay at least. What were her delusions? There were a lot of them I think based on the old westerns that she used to watch.

Really? There were a couple of times where sometimes it was like the cowboys outside or the gangsters outside because she also loved old gang yeah yeah sure and um trying to get into the house there was one time that really cracked me up though because this is this is a nez perce woman born in a log cabin in lapway idaho on the nez perce reservation went to chamawa ind. You know, this is a native woman. But one of her delusions was like, the Indians are outside trying to get in. I'm like, Grandma, I think the Indians are in the house. And then that's what snapped her out of it.

She was like, oh, I guess you're right. Well, that's wild that the, because those got to be really old memories. So that was something that was available in the culture that movies would come through? Yeah. Yeah, she loved films. That was her hobby post-retirement. She got a VHS player. She would get blank VHSs and she subscribed to cable and would just highlight the movies she wanted to record build her whole schedule

around recording these movies so like by the time she was done doing that she maybe had like 4,000 titles just ceiling like to floor

just these pull out catalog yep and she watch them over and over a lot of them she never watched again never watched

but she had them just archived and collected them and kept them all in a binder with like either perfect typeface, you know, with her typewriter. She always used the same typewriter. Yeah. Or, you know, just her impeccable, beautiful, like boarding school, Catholic school handwriting. Right, right.

Filling in the middle. Well, that was something I noticed about The Unknown Country, too, was the focus and the sort of like the menace of what i read because it is a poetry movie right but the menace of the legacy of the i guess you would call them colonizers or the executors of manifest destiny right so you you're dealing with you what are essentially cowboys in the movie. And your character, not just with men, but with a certain, like, the way she focused on these faces, the only thing you could think, like, well, this is the great-grandson or this is the, you know. That's interesting. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because it wasn't, it just felt naturally menacing. And the men were menacing in the movie. It just felt naturally menacing. And the men were menacing in the movie. Yeah. And I think Marissa, our director, her original inspiration for that was making that road trip because her husband's a paleontologist and works sometimes in South Dakota where these digs happen, Hell Creek. Yeah. The Hell Creek bed. And then also would be stationed in Dallas.

So Marissa got very used to this road trip, this exact one that Tana would take. And that's like hard a MAGA country is driving through there. There is this sort of, especially like with, you know, coastal liberalism that you're raised with. She's from San Diego. There's a very heightened awareness of where you're at. But also when you're meeting people, the congeniality, the communal feel. Like, I mean, I just, I talk about this all the time, having grown up in Montana, even though my reservation is very liberal. Like the rest of Montana is not always, you know.

I know. I got to go play those places and I'm always paranoid. But, you know, there's a real fear that I think a lot of people who don't understand the Midwest have of the people there, you know, just this kind of underlying feel that the civil war is going to start in the Midwest sort of a thing. Yeah. But then you're actually there and you see people really taking care of each other. Yeah. It's always the outliers in any given family, you know, the drunk uncles in any given family are the ones who are spouting this off, making the most noise. And that's what you see from the outside. But at the heart of it, it's like you just have small town country folk who just want to take care of each other.

And there is an element of suspension of judgment as long as you're not getting into politics or religion. Right. It's just, you know, there was, I think, Out Magazine in 2014 named Texas as one of the gayest friendly places to live. Yeah. Because of this sense of live and let live that's embedded culturally. Sure. Even though it's like politics are very like starkly opposed to it. Like, you know, your water pump goes out, you rely on your neighbor and you don't care

who they are. Like, you know, your water pump goes out, you rely on your neighbor and you don't care who they are. Well, that was a time where, you know, what I tend to talk about is the loss of necessary tolerance. Yeah. And, you know, once you remove that from the equation where people can be shameless about their intolerance or their personal morality around other people, then it becomes a real problem. Right. And there's no way to bridge it. But I want to believe you that you go to these towns and if you don't engage them in a certain way,

they're going to be decent people. And I imagine that's true. And I think it's true if you're a pretty young woman too. Really? I mean, if you look like a West Coast liberal, then it may not be the same welcoming committee. But honestly, a lot of West Coast liberals look like they're farmhands. Well, that's a new thing. Yeah, everybody looks like they're in some, you know, old Western picture. Yeah. But I can count the number of times on one hand that I've felt like out of place or made to feel out of place. I don't belong there.

But with you, it's like not just a liberal person. It's a native person, right? Yeah. Do people identify that usually? You know, in the Midwest, a lot. There's like this hyper fixation on like high cheekbones. And it's like, you've got that, you know, I remember sitting in that bar in Texas where, you know,

Tana's just traveling in Texas. And there was a local guy who came up and sat next to me. It's the scene where I'm just lighting a cigarette and I'm wanting to use the bathroom. Yeah. And just like, he's just looking at me, like leaning and looking at me and then like talking about what we're there and then eventually like disclose that I'm native and he like slaps his hands together. I knew it.

I knew it. It's like he was so proud, like he found one, you know? So yeah, it's interesting when you're in, you know, small towns, people want to suss out who you are and like ethnicity is a big part of that. But they want to box you in too, right? Kind of. Yeah. I mean, because then-

I mean, they want you to affirm their stereotypes to a degree. I think like we all kind of do. We do it innately. Yeah. You know, and then you make up your story for that person. Right. And then you find you're wrong. Yep.

I do it here twice a week. Eek out a living on that. Yeah, exactly. It's like I have an idea of who this person is. Now they're going to talk me out of it. Right, there you go. That's the conversation. Now they're going to talk me out of it.

Right. There you go. That's the conversation. But I thought the arc of that movie was interesting because, and I imagine it has some degree of truth, that whatever was keeping you away from going back to the reservation for as long as you did and then reentering that community. And this is also something that I found amazing about reservation Dogs was there is a groove of interaction that is slower, more human, more to the point. Yep. And that, you know, whatever the aversion of the character was, and I don't know if you feel this now or how often you return back,

have you explored that for yourself? Do you feel comfortable when you go back? Oh, absolutely. That was where tana was very adjacent to me because i the switch up that i'd made in her life um was if my non-native parent wasn't supportive of my native identity okay so i had made tana's mother a non-native woman who kind of got swept up in this romance with this native man and wanted him to be all these things that he wasn't. So then living with her during formative years and hearing all of this racist shit about my dad and my family from my mom.

Right. Tana. Yeah. Tana, hearing all of this. The name Tana came from a Lakota word, Tanakhila, which means hummingbird. That's my dad. That's Lily's dad's Blackfeet name. So that was kind of. Your dad your my dad yeah yeah um so that was kind of a nod to my dad um who's where my

native side comes from yeah and you know my mom she moved to the res though she met my dad on the res because she'd moved there to work in head Start. And she was very aware of where she was coming in as an outsider. She built curriculum around what Blackfeet people had to say about how they wanted their kids to be taught. What was that like? I mean, my mom's just kind of a do-gooder. Yeah. She's very cool.

But what was the dialogue in terms of curriculum? What were they concerned about? Well, one thing that she did when I was in elementary school was she worked to figure out a way to get Blackfeet language into our school. So we were the first class. And this was a little bit before language immersion programs started popping up nationwide. We have a beautiful language immersion school, and it's in our public schools on the reservation, too, now. Kind of based on the King Kamehameha model in hawaii for revitalization yeah but this was before that um that came to my res when i was going in when we were about ready to leave the late 90s is about

the time that we did you speak a bit yeah like i can you know count to 10, know a few colors, know animals, know some bad words like a lot of us do. I can introduce myself. That's like what we're all taught. And, you know, it's just a process of relearning. So, yeah, with Tana, I had decided, okay, so if, you know, Lily, if me, if I had a mom that was somehow disappointed by what this life was with my dad or somehow like felt like oh you know because my mom could take teasing like she could take it yeah you know and she would um from from natives yeah yeah she would take it graciously you know it's like that's part of how you know you're loved as if you're teased you know yeah yeah but that's foreign to a lot of people who

are coming in and you know there are a lot of people that like end up with native people that come in with a certain like amount of a savior complex sure you just see it all yeah um but like my mom was very get in and help and stay out of the way yeah um so i'd imagine that tana's mom was somebody who was very intolerant and raised her like away from her native family and like she grew up with certain certain embedded prejudices against what it is to be on a reservation. Right. Because I do see that in some of my extended family. That their desire to pass in a way. Yeah.

Or like with my mom's family, just some of the stereotypes that her dad. Your grandfather. Yeah. The stereotypes that her dad. Your grandfather. Yeah. Even though he, like, grew up in the South. Yeah.

You know, and it's like he worked on the Navajo reservation for a long time. In New Mexico, Arizona? In New Mexico. Yeah. Yeah. Installing power lines. He worked for Motorola to put the communication system in. So he had this, on one side, like this fondness yeah and on this other side like no

absolutely my daughter's not moving to a reservation um so there was like yeah it was this imagination that if my life were more centered in that which it wasn't you know i was pretty estranged from my grandparents didn't really know a lot of that side. On your dad's side? On my mom's side. On your mom's side, yeah. It's very, very much, you know, we became an intergenerational house when I was 11 with my dad's mom and like grew up on my dad's reservation. And it's like, that's who my family is. Yeah.

A lot of times I have to catch myself when I talk about on both sides, I'm talking about both sides of my dad's family. It's like, my mom is so important to me. Yeah. And I do have cousins that I talk to, and, you know, I talk to my aunties, but, like, it's kind of, you know, a foreign world to me.

Really? Yeah. So the character that you were playing in Unknown Country, you had to make a shift in that you were brought up to be detached. Yeah. From your native roots. And I decided that later in her life, when she could kind of differentiate and break away from her mom a bit, she did go back to Minneapolis, did like reconnect with her grandma. Yes.

Like I made part of her life always. Yes. And then took up the mantle of taking care of her grandma so but i guess like in the in these in in first cow and in you know the big movie the oscar nominated movie killers of the flower moon it's interesting because i i don't know if you came up against you know type casting it when you were younger and acting did because I know that is an issue with people of a certain ethnicity or race, and especially with Native people and African American people. Did you deal with that? You know, to a degree, but I think I was warned about being like that

I would have to deal with that more than I actually dealt with it. Right. And maybe things were turning a little bit? I think so. Yeah. You know, and it's like I'm mixed. So I can play multiple ways. I do feel like in some circumstances it maybe kept me from getting roles. Because I went to, when I was an undergrad, I didn't get cast in a whole lot. Were you studying acting?

I was. At University of Montana? Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. And my classwork was great. Yeah. I got consistently great feedback. Right.

I felt good about my scene work, but I didn't get cast that much. I never really got affirmation as to why that was. I did raise hell with the department my freshman year about them doing Peter Pan, which may have kind of, I don't want to say blacklisted me, but made maybe some people a little more averse to wanting to work with me. You were fighting for the role as Peter? No. Why can't I? What kind of place is this?

Why do you assume that me, a native actress named Lily, would want to audition for Tiger Lily? Yeah, yeah. I want to be on the wire. I want to fly. for Tigerland. Yeah, yeah. I want to be on the wire. I want to fly.

No, I just, I took issue with them doing that play at all because the largest population of non-white students at the university are natives. And it's like, that's an obscenely racist play. Oh, wow.

I don't even know it then. Oh, man. Peter Pan, like, it's literally the lines in there. And of course, they cut out all of the parts that were very blatantly racist and then ultimately treated it, like, they're the natives to Never Never Land.

They're not the Indians. But, like, in J.M. Barrie's whole cowboy Indian thing. Right, right, right, right. Like, the lines were ug, ug, wah. Oh, okay. For all the native characters. So, was they switched out to actual native language? Nope.

They just made it kind of a light sort of reminiscent wash of polynesian culture which was also like okay whatever yeah whatever but anyways like raising cane enough instead of and maybe that had something to do with it but i think a lot of it also had to do with i didn't i don't know there were a lot of family dramas but i would get um i well where i wasn't getting cast in theater main stage shows i was getting cast in student films with the new media arts program there yeah so that was really nice because that was students recognizing that the one show that i did get cast in or the first show i got cast in was a multimedia piece and people could see immediately that i worked well on camera.

So then I started getting requests from media arts to do their films. And it was great because by the time I graduated, I had a whole reel. Like actors move to L.A. and work for years to get a reel assembled. And you got here with a reel? I didn't ever come here, but I did leave school with a reel that we could submit. Well, I think the interesting thing, too, in what I was going to get at in approaching Molly Kyle or even in the first cow, and you played, did you play a princess of some kind? Royalty-ish? Kind of. That character, I kind of based on a woman in my family history that I learned more about again later with Killers of the Flower Moon.

But her name was Natawista, Medicine Snake Woman. And she was the wife of a frontiersman diplomat named Alexander Culbertson and had a lot of money around this period of time okay turns out um janae collins who plays my sister in killers of the flower moon rita the one who dies with a house explosion yeah um janae is uh not to east is great great great great granddaughter wow i'm not to east is great great great grand niece you are in real life yeah so janae and i are related in real life that's wild. Yeah, it's fantastic. And, you know, that side of our family, like, is a very clean, cleanly kept line.

It goes back. You can track it back. Yep, that branch of the family for quite a ways. But through tribal genealogy? Yeah, just through family, like family oral tradition. Oh, really? Who we come from. And you do, you have some.

But also, you know, you put it on government papers because we're kept, we have pedigrees the way that a lot of animals do. Is that true? Oh, yeah. Blood quantum, like keeping track of like family lineage. Like you have to, you have to have a certain blood quantum to be considered an indigenous person. So our records of our blood quantum is very, very intact. Huh. And you go and you have, I know I did a little bit of research, you have kind of tribal leaders. Yeah. Yeah. Nauta Wista's nephew was Mike Stu Red Crow. He was the one who signed Treaty 7 for Kainai Nation in Canada. So he was, yeah, he was chief during that time. And what about on your mom's side? Big old question mark.

You don't know? I really don't know much about my mom's side at all. Because they don't keep the genealogy. Not really. I mean, one of my aunties did a genetics test. So there's some semblance of maybe a longer story. I know that there was a dutch ancestor my mom's uh grandpa was um had come over from the netherlands okay but he got to the netherlands through france and then they got to france from like iran oh wow yeah

it's it's a it's a strain like but i don't know there's no oral tradition as far as that goes on my mom's side but i guess the the question that's interesting is that there's a difference between playing a person who is Native and playing a Native person. Right. Right? Yep. And at some point, you know, you've been fortunate in that you've gotten roles like that. You got roles like that before killers. Yeah. You know got roles like that before killers. Yeah.

You know, certainly certain women. But you must be aware of that when you have to approach a significantly native character. Right. To make sure the humanity is correct. Yeah. When it's essential to the story that that character is native because it's getting out of history. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I was a little resistant early on when I was told that I'd be pigeonholed in typecast because I was like, well, native people are everywhere. Right.

There's a lot of people that you watch on follow and probably have on your playlist that you have no idea are native. Yeah. But they're there. I mean, I met a Blackfeet guy in Austria named Klaus Bukowski. We're everywhere. I mean, I met a Blackfeet guy in Austria named Klaus Bukowski. We're everywhere. But yeah, when I was playing, like for a role like Molly, even though there's nobody alive who remembers her specifically, there's absolutely a legacy. And there are descendants and there's people who are her living flesh and blood today.

And, you know, the whole reign of terror is still an open wound for the community. So there's a lot of ways that you need to approach it. And I hate the word, I both hate and respect the word authenticity, because authenticity at a surface level feels like you're appraising a rug, you know? Yeah, I was thinking about that too, because the idea of authenticity, I think what I said was that, like, if I was my authentic self, I would do nothing. I am with you on that. Far enough into this campaign, I just want to be a slug for a minute.

Right. But you do, like, there are components of charm and vulnerability that I think has been kind of put under this umbrella of authenticity. That if you are candid enough and you are empathetic and exude a certain amount of vulnerability, I think it's just culturally surprising. So people are like, oh, that's a real person right there. Right. It's their authentic self.

Right, right. And that element I think is something that is easy for people to access with my performances on screen. Yeah. Maybe why you pick up on this, um, people projecting whatever they want. Sure.

Which is, um, that's good. Yeah. It's especially if you want, um, audiences to have empathy for your character and what they're going through, which was essential for this story.

Cause for so long, the focus was only on the fbi element oh you mean building the movie yeah yeah yeah yeah and then um in building molly there's there were a lot of responsibilities to hold responsibility first and foremost to her grandchildren like her family did you meet them i did i met margie and i met Billy. Margie, her granddaughter, I can see, likely was one of the biggest ways Gran was able to draw Molly as a character in his book. Because when you're with Margie, a lot of that is there. And a lot of Margie went into Molly. We only had one, you know, a good significant long amount of time together.

We had a meeting. What did she do? Leo was there too. You know, we were just kind of talking about how this love story would maybe be possible. And though Margie was the one who told Marty at a meeting Gray Horse had held with, you know, all the filmmakers, she got up and said, you have to remember these two loved each other. In my meeting with Leo, she was also at the same time very skeptical about how that could have been possible and how we would possibly be able to play it. Yeah, it's one of the things that sticks in my mind about the movie almost more than anything else was that, you know how does leo or how does that character or or that person necessarily and who i'm sure is not you know as compelling as leo

in real life but how do you how do you hold both of those worlds in place and still honor the love how do you know right that what you're expected to do is kill your wife and then have this compartmentalized love for them? I thought it was very tricky. Yeah. And I think he did an incredible job with an almost impossible character to play. Yeah. And it's a real Scorsese character. Yeah.

And I needed his performance to give mine any dignity that it wasn't just about this like handsome blue-eyed devil you know it was right it was um i mean on one hand like maybe re-watches the film and people commit to like the little nuances in it um which kind of bowl over you the first watch um which honestly is kind of what most people give any film is one watch. But there was this whole guardianship program set up. Osage is being deemed incompetent of handling their own money. Literally incompetent. Osage is the title that was on your paperwork.

You had to have a white person appointed to be your guardian of your money. Yeah. And it was of benefit to a lot of people to be married to their guardian. Right. Because then you just say, hey, honey, write a check for me to do this. Right. And Osage women, they own everything, you know, culturally. Oh, that's so funny.

It's sort of like musicians today. Yeah, what do you call a musician without a girlfriend? Broke. Homeless. But yeah. yeah what do you call a musician without a girlfriend broke homeless but yeah but your character you know as as it evolves in the movie are acutely aware of this yeah um acutely aware of some elements of it the thing that was a big, like, clue, and that came from, I was, asked around the community and got permission to use that analogy. And everybody was like, oh, yeah, absolutely. That makes sense. For who?

For Leo? For Leo. Yeah. It was like, okay, Molly sees him as this coyote. She sees him as this trickster. So that first scene calling him out for that, that was something that was added in later. But it's kind of like, all right, I got your number.

I know how this story ends. Right. Like, so Molly, you know, finding this man who self, you know, he admits it,

you know, I like to make a party at night and sleep all day. Sure. Do you love money? Sure. Do you love whiskey? She's like, all right,

good. You're easy. Yeah. I get you. Yep. I get you. I've got it. I got your number.

I can handle you and you'll enjoy money, but you'll also write my checks for me. And now you look good. Yeah, I get you. And then eventually there became real love there. And, you know, the elements. Yeah, that's a huge part of it is you see a man that is so committed and so much loves his kids. There's no way you're going to suspect that he would do anything to hurt them or you. Even if you do suspect it, you know how easy it is. And I think a lot of people who are in relationships that are maybe not this abusive to the point of being poisoned to death. But, you know, these dynamics. That's a very specific. relationships that are maybe not this abusive to the point of being poisoned to death, but, you know, these dynamics. That's a very specific, that's a systemic gaslighting.

Yeah, absolutely. But that as a metaphor is what it is. Yep, absolutely. And as a larger metaphor, committing to this love story was a way of looking at it as an analogy for the broken trust that colonization United States government has had with indigenous peoples. It's been nothing but entering into trust relationships that are supposed to be mutually beneficial. And then just the continual erosion of our sovereignty. Which is what you're seeing happen to Molly. And, you know, we work within the systems that we can. We maintain like our own communities as much as we can.

When you're crippled by these situations of guardianship or being wards of the U.S. government, of not having true sovereignty, then there's not a lot of option. There's not a lot of other way out. You have to be very creative. You have to be very subversive. You have to be very together. You have to be very subversive. You have to be very together. And ultimately, you know, where we're at now, though I think contextualized differently, is still directly related to that. Yeah.

And we're still continually entering into trust relationships and good faith. Yeah. yeah you know it's like so this um yeah on a microcosm this relationship felt like a good way to have this conversation for what the film's really about and what do you and with um with marty marty had seen uh certain women is that what you apparently yeah yeah amazing i'm not sure at what point in the process he saw it, but I know that when he did, he saw what he needed for Molly. Because somebody like Kelly made a film the way she makes films. Right. And I remember one of the films that I studied and loved, still one of my favorite movies to this day, is Adaptation.

Oh, yeah. Charlie Kaufman's script. That's great. So good. I watched that recently, yeah. It's so, and it still holds up every performance every character the writing like the meta qualities in the writing that are so funny yeah um like i just i studied i've seen that film so many times and i would just study study study

it yeah and i remember nicholas cage as you know charlie yeah talking about you know why can't a story just be about flowers yeah and i remember thinking that when i was watching it's like yeah i'd watch that movie yeah then years later here's kelly reicher it's like oh this movie it's kind of just really about horses kind of really just about ranching yeah yeah yeah but it's saying everything right i think like maybe the neuroses that uh that of a writer that kaufman was kind of um tongue-in-cheek handling in that film is what gets in the way of just the observational quality a lens has and just the trust that your audience if they've sought out this kind of film they're going to make

those connections themselves oh yeah and and nicholas cage's relationship with that tape recorder okay sounched over. Dawn of time. We're starting here. The sweat. God, the way that he was able to sustain this comedic timing with himself. Yeah. That's just like, that's every actor's dream is to play their own twin, I think.

Yeah, he's kind of an awesome character. Mm-hmm. In real life, I imagine, as well. Have you ever met him? I have not, but I love watching his interviews, like when Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent came out at South By. I remember he just went on and on in one of his interviews about, yeah, I'm wearing this because I wanted to look like shortbread, because now I just really want to eat shortbread. It's like, Sir, you're a work of art. Yeah, an authentic weirdo.

Yep. Yeah. And now, how do you weigh in on people's reaction to the movie? You know, in terms of, you know, whether it was correct. You know, the thing is, there's not... We were hoping that there wouldn't be a correct takeaway. Yeah. I think –

How is that not going to happen? I mean, one thing I just hope is that the human element of it that we – you know, Marty fought hard for, that like, you know, initially was turned away when the script was rechained – or was revamped to center Ernest and Molly instead of the FBI. Yeah. was revamped to center Ernest and Molly instead of the FBI. The morning that you go through watching it, because you do, it's like you're invited into this relationship. And it was one of the first times in my career in any work that I've done on film, I've watched a character I've played,

I think, the same way the audience is watching her, instead of analyzing maybe what I would have done different in this take or whatever. And I just feeling i was leaning in and feeling so much love for her and so much like i missed her when she wasn't on screen i was wondering where she was um and not even in a way where it's like where's my coverage where's my coverage it's just like patty smith said it beautifully when she when she introduced um me at the national board of review she said it's like the new moon it's um when it's not seen it still felt and um she's amazing she's oh my god oh my god so amazing that's authentic yes patty just lives in it yeah

so easy to be around i just love her yeah sweet um but yeah when i was watching killers of the flower moon and feeling all of these things for molly and i didn't even necessarily access when we were making it right i also saw the audience doing the same thing and like that connection is what matters to me most is that the love that you have for her for because then you feel her loss it's like you you meet briefly her sisters and all of those actresses did such a tremendous job drawing these these in a short scene you get a sense of who these women are and then you miss them when they're gone totally um and that balance of contempt for leonardo's character yeah and and the struggle for empathy yep like you have when

you're hearing a good trickster story. It's like you're following the trickster narrative. They're essentially the anti-hero or the complicated hero of the story. They never really win in the end, but you learn a lot of lessons from what they do, how not to behave. That's right. And they kind of slink off. Yep. There's not a confident exit.

Right. Yeah. They just kind of like slink off. Yep. There's not a confident exit. Right, yep. They just kind of like flit away. Exactly. So like when I got this trickster story in my language lesson, suddenly Ernest made sense to me as Lily. The whole film made sense to me in a new way as a trickster story. moment where you know if that was in place you know in in in the character that that moment where the trickster you know not unlike a narcissist exactly is revealed in that scene where you meet out on that dirt road when you know everything is up and you might have known it before but you were like this is the end of the trickster story.

So go move on and destroy something else, you charming fuck. Pretty much. Yeah. You sound like you grew up with these stories, Mark. I was obsessed with the idea of the trickster for a while. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, you see it.

Yeah. Suddenly when you have that framework to apply to this story, it makes sense in a whole new way. It does. I mean, it's kind of amazing. Yeah. I've gone through very sort of untethered mystical periods. Yeah. There's definitely been times in my life where I've been driving at night.

The Schopenhauer mystic. Yeah. Yeah. I've been driving and a coyote will stop in the road. I'm like, I get it. All right, all right. I get that I'm being guided somehow. And I have to interpret this.

It's the worst. You got to reel your brain in sometimes. Like the hummingbirds from your special ones. Exactly. The hummingbirds. Yeah, I feed them all the time. Yep. And I get,

it's ridiculous when I see the feeders out to you, I'm like, are they okay? Yep. Yep. Yeah,

me, it came in the form of a bee once. Yeah? Yeah, I still don't know what it was telling me, but I had a pet bee

for a while. But that's an amazing thing about, you know, about native spirituality in general, is that you make room for this stuff and it's an amazing thing about, you know, about Native spirituality in general, is that you make room for this stuff. And it's not that it's necessarily real, but it's a guide. Yeah. And I think maintaining that light-handed humor with it, that acknowledgement, you know.

Sure. I think it's really tempting for a lot of New Age philosophy to grab our ways because they think they always but like having that humorous approach it's like all right there's there's patterns here that i'm noticing um and within that there's a lot of humor yeah you know it's like one of my one of my like spiritual family back home one of my ceremonial family was joking about that with somebody who came in rolled in you, an outsider who was invited and rolled into one of these doings. And, like, this eagle flew by and then landed and asked, oh, Clayton, what does that mean? I think it means that eagle's tired and wants to take a rest.

I'm not playing this game with you. Right. Yeah. Yep. And that's a lot of it, you know. What's a ceremonial family as opposed to a... I mean, when you go through ceremony,

you're in it with people that you have to have a lot of trust with that you come back around and do it with again and again. What type of ceremony? Oh, all kinds. Like this one,

you know, we'll just say, we'll just call it a sweat. Oh, yeah. So that's part of it., we'll just say, we'll just call it a sweat. Oh, yeah. So that's part of it. But there's a larger thing that I'm a little hesitant to put on radio talking about. Okay. It's like our family that kind of not related or if we are related, it's, you know. It's like the trust of, it's like, you know, when you do hallucinogens, you need a guide. Yeah, that's not part of our way.

No, but I mean the same idea that you're going to be vulnerable in a way that you're not going to have control over. Exactly. Because you go into ceremony to bring balance to things ultimately. To yourself, to the world around you, to cleanse out stuff, to kind of clear the cash from the previous year. I mean, there's a lot of reasons that you have it. How often do you do it? Oh, not as much these days, but. You're going to need to after this press tour.

Oh, for sure. No, the way that I've always kind of looked at all of this is when I can't be there, then it'll still find me. Like, I mean, fasting is a big, like, part of a lot of, you know, our ways. And like, there was a period of time making this movie we were doing it in the dead of summer and i couldn't go home to do um to to participate in that part of the year where fasts happen but i found that i was fasting anyway and i felt like because it was for this wasting illness portion of the film oh really molly was like dwindling away yeah yeah smaller and smaller there was a i mean doesn't remarkably

read but there was about a 30 pound weight loss during the process of making the movie um to kind of particularly accommodate that period of time of wasting away yeah but um the last most intense periods of it just happened to hit at that point where you fast so i was like okay i'm fasting for molly then like that's what this is because when you're doing a character like that and you're handling a history like that it's kind of accomplishing the same thing that brings people together to do ceremony you know it's um bringing balance to things it's exercising uh trauma it's um in a way that's safe in community yeah that's shared yeah um that you can be held you know so that's kind of that's kind of how i looked at that whole period because it worked out yeah it worked out and there were a lot of people in osage country

who would you know people i'd go sweat with that would invite me. Right. And just knew that I needed taken care of for this role and felt familiar, similar back Oh, wow. Really? On set? Yeah, not on set. Yeah, periphery.

Like get invited and then go on the weekend sort of a thing. And you spent time with them? Yeah. Oh, that must have been totally connective. Yeah. And I think playing a character like this, especially when, you know, I was talking a little bit earlier about my hesitance to jump into the unknown country because of just this history of the docudrama on reservation can be just a poverty porn display and be really exploitive. And that's absolutely not who Marissa is and not what the film, that film was. Yeah, I can get that sense at all.

Like there was still that pride. I mean, the film, that film was. Yeah. I can get that sense at all. There was like, there was still that, that pride. I mean, the one scene with your grandfather, there was some amazing moments there. And Richard is in Reds Dogs too. That was all improv. It was great. Yeah. That's Richard. We called him the day before and asked, cause we were like, we need a character like that. So that, and I was like, that's Richard Ray Whitman. And then called him that day. And he got on a plane that night and shot with us the day after that. Wild. That was how we ran and get, it was a running gun.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. We were running and ganning. Ganning, running and ganning. So what's going on now? I mean, how are you going to choose, like, what do you, you know, here's the odd thing. Like, when I talked to Sterling, he's a sweet guy. Yeah, he is. He came to my birthday party. He flew out, he's a sweet guy. Yeah, he is. He came to my birthday party.

He flew out, came to my birthday party. It was a small party and I was just sort of, because I like that guy. Yeah, that Tulsa, the Tulsa LAX direct is the Harjo. Yeah.

The Harjo direct. Yeah. But it was so nice. But like, having seen all his movies, you know, leading up to the series, which was, I think, the best TV show the last, you know, 20, 30 years for a lot of different reasons. But he was here, and I'm like, what do you work on?

He's like, I'm doing, and I'm thinking, like, we got to keep doing the native stuff. I mean, we're not going to do a superhero movie, are you? People need to know, you know. Right. How do you move forward thinking about roles? I mean, kind of the way that I moved forward from undergrad, any role that I play is going to become in some way an indigenous role, regardless if it's explicitly so. Which does a lot of restoration of like breaking down stereotypes of who we are and where we belong. like breaking down stereotypes of who we are and where we belong right um i definitely still feel and a lot of it's the projects you attract yeah you know i um there have been several times in

my career and i think a lot of actors can relate to this where you have to audition for something because it's too good of a connection or you're auditioning for the casting director more than you are for the role whatever it is i a lot of times really phone it in if i don't want it okay intentional failure i'm all for it a bit yeah polite failure i'm gonna polish this so that i'll they'll think of me for other stuff but you know it's like just drop a stitch somewhere so it's not too well that's a that's some controlled craft there i, sometimes it just happens that way. But I do find that the roles that find me are ones that I'm really, really excited about. And it's, you know, there have been a lot of offers and things that have been wonderful but haven't really felt like quite right for the next move.

This next one I'm doing, I'm so excited about because it continues. This next one I'm doing, I'm so excited about because it continues. It feels so full circle in a lot of ways, you know, going back to adaptation being like my little master class study of acting and everything. My next film is a Charlie Kaufman script. Wow. It's an adaptation of a beautiful novel by Yoko Ogawa called The Memory Police. Huh. And it's a nondescript island in a nondescript time. So it's like nowhere, therefore everywhere. Right. And it's, you know, a sci-fi in the way like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a sci-fi dealing with the subconscious, dealing with memory. Uh-huh.

So it's... Is he directing? No, no. The director's Reed Marano who started out as a DP. Oh, good. And still is, you know, a very gifted cinematographer who worked with...

She shot vinyl for Marty. Oh, okay, okay. She and Rodrigo are very close. He was like kind of a mentor for her. Okay. And she's...

Yeah, she's started into her directing journey and has done a few features now. Well, that's good. That's good. Because like if Charlie directs it, you'll get to a point in the movie where it'll be like, wait, what's happening? Rewind it. I got to go back.

Go back. Yes, you watched I'm Thinking of Ending Things too. Yeah, I did. And also the other one, the Synecdoche. Oh, yeah, Synecdoche. Oh, my God. I love Philip Seymour Hoffman. Oh, I love him, too.

But that movie, at some point, I'm like, I think there's a lot here, and I'm only getting a very little of it. Yep. And it's one of those ones you've got to go back to. I kind of tried to watch that movie the same way I watch a Beckett play. Oh, yeah, that's right. You just got to let it happen to you. Did you watch that movie the same way I watch a Beckett play. It's like, you just got to let it happen to you. Did you watch that animated thing, Anomalisa? Yes. Oh my God. That's incredible. That's the best thing ever. Yep. So intuitive about humanness. Yep. And it's puppets. I know. It was mind-blowing to me. The guy on the road. Yep.

Very existential. Yeah, yeah. Well, it was great talking to you. You too. You feel good? Thank you. I feel good. Me too. Where are you going now?

Where am I going now? You got a TV thing? Yeah, I know I've got to get glam touched up. Oh. There's probably a panicking manager out there. There's cameras okay all right well uh good luck i hope you win thank you it would be nice to win it would be nice but it's also would be nice not to you know okay you tell yourself what you have to keep your

expectations low and then you're always surprised. Preaching to the choir. Always pleasantly surprised. Low to negative is where I go. You're the most jovial misanthrope I've ever met. It's all about self-hatred. I just project it, but it's easy to reel it in. All right. Take care. Thank you, Mark. What a joy people and i i don't throw that word around what a joy was to talk to uh lily gladstone killers of the flower moon is now available to buy or rent on digital

platforms and is streaming on apple tv plus okay, hang out a second. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5pm in Rock City at torontorock.com.

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boost on every dollar you contribute when you subscribe to Robinhood Gold. But get this, now through April 30th, Robinhood is even boosting every single dollar you transfer in from other retirement accounts with a 3% match. That's right, no cap on the 3% match. Robinhood Gold gets you the most for your retirement thanks to their IRA with a 3% match. This offer is good through April 30th. Get started at robinhood.com slash boost. Subscription fees apply. And now for some legal info. Claim as of Q1 2024 validated by Radius Global Market Research.

Investing involves risk, including loss. Limitations apply to IRAs and 401ks. 3% match requires Robinhood Gold for one year from the date of first 3% match. Must keep Robinhood IRA for five years. The 3% matching on transfers is subject to specific terms and conditions. Robinhood IRA available to U.S. customers in good standing. Robinhood Financial LLC member SIPC is a registered broker dealer. Hey, to get to know some of the people Lily and I were talking about, go check out episode 1424 with Kelly Reichart and episode 1252 with Sterling Harjo.

That episode was the first time I met Sterling before I did a guest role on Reservation Dogs. You're having a hard time figuring out where to premiere this, and they were going to do it at Hollywood Forever, at the cemetery. Like, if people don't know, Hollywood Forever is this event. It's a cemetery with a lot of famous actors. It's a famous cemetery, but they do movies there, right? So because we can't do it inside, is that the thing? They wanted to find a place to screen the premiere of Reservation Dogs, right?

I have a meeting, so I have a meeting. And you know, FX is amazing. They've been so good to work with. Creatively, like, free. Let's do everything. But we have a meeting with marketing. They're like, yeah, we're thinking about doing the premiere here at this,

it's a really great, it's a cemetery. And I was like, oh, shit. I was like, look, man, none of the Indians are are gonna show up ain't nobody showing up including myself to the cemetery to have any just like i was like we're gonna have to find some place that's like yeah i'm we're glad we asked you like man they got navajo filmmakers on this thing they're not gonna show up man they won't even stand across the street from this place you know oh too much that episode 1252 and kelly reichardt is episode 1424 they're available for free in whatever podcast app you're using right now to get every episode of wtf ad free

sign up for wtf plus by going to the link in the episode description or go to wtfpod.com and click on wtf plus And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by Acast. Here's some archived guitar. God knows there's enough of it. Thank you. Boomer lives. Monkey and La Fonda. Cat angels everywhere. Cat angels everywhere.