“Killers of the Flower Moon” star Lily Gladstone recently joined Rolling Stone for an interview in which she was asked to weigh in on the heated criticism of the film made by “Reservation Dogs” actor Devery Jacobs, who Gladstone said is a friend. Gladstone also appeared on “Reservation Dogs.” Jacobs is a fellow Indigenous actor best known for playing Elora on three seasons of the FX and Hulu comedy series. She called out “Flower Moon” last October for not portraying its Osage characters with “honor or dignity” and for further dehumanizing them by depicting their deaths.
“We’re friends. I crashed on her couch in Toronto when‘Certain Women’played at TIFF,” Gladstone said when asked about Jacobs’ criticisms, with Rolling Stone noting the actor’s “face drops” when the topic is brought up. “I don’t want to bring heat back on her for this because I think that’s unfair. Her reaction is hers.”
“Her reaction is a response to a lot of trauma that particularly Native women feel seeing these things for the first time,” Gladstone continued. “I had a lot of time acclimating myself to the script. The Osage people have had their lives to understand this history. The process of making this movie gave a lot of people a chance to speak. Ultimately, Osage reaction is what I care about the most.”
A couple weeks after Jacobs posted her criticisms on X (formerly Twitter), Gladstone used the same platform to tell Indigenous women and youth to see the film “only if you feel ready, and see it with people you feel safe with. You’ll likely have a lot of generational grief to process. You’re not alone.”
“Flower Moon” is based on a true story and centers around the Reign of Terror, a term given to the murders of at least 60 members of the Osage nation in the late 1920s. Jacobs wrote on X last October that watching “Flower Moon” was “fucking hellfire.”
“Imagine the worst atrocities committed against [your] ancestors, then having to sit [through] a movie explicitly filled with them, with the only respite being 30 minute long scenes of murderous white guys talking about/planning the killings,” Jacobs wrote at the time. “It must be noted that Lily Gladstone is an absolute legend and carried Mollie with tremendous grace. All the incredible Indigenous actors were the only redeeming factors of this film. Give Lily her goddamn Oscar. But while all of the performances were strong, if you look proportionally, each of the Osage characters felt painfully underwritten, while the white men were given way more courtesy and depth.”
“I don’t feel that these very real [Indigenous] people were shown honor or dignity in the horrific portrayal of their deaths,” she added. “Contrarily, I believe that by showing more murdered Native women on screen, it normalizes the violence committed against us and further dehumanizes our people.”
Gladstone has been making the press rounds in support of her “Flower Moon” Oscar campaign. She recently won the Golden Globe for best actress in a motion picture drama and is nominated for best actress at the Critic’s Choice Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Award. She’s widely predicted to earn an Oscar nomination for the role.
