Interview With "Fancy Dance" Actress Lily Gladstone

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[00:02:13] I didn't come all the way out here to fight. Why did you come? I'm worried about your sister. I hope she don't come back soon. The state's gonna take Rokey. I'm here to talk to you about your niece.

[00:02:27] We ran your background check and I had no choice but to place Rokey within your father. You can't do this. Auntie, I'm going to grandpa's. Rokey, it's alright. Just let me talk to her! Rokey! Hello, my name is Emma Sasic and I'm with Next Best Picture.

[00:02:40] Lily, it's a pleasure to see you and chat with you again. First off, I guess I just want to say congratulations. I know that this film has been... It's been a long time coming with this film. It premiered at Sundance last year.

[00:02:52] You kind of did the festival circuit. And now finally, more audience members get to see it. How do you feel about finally getting to this big moment? I'm so happy.

[00:03:03] This is one of the films that I've made that I just get lonely for as soon as it's over. I just want to watch it again and again. Watching it the first time at Sundance, I was just...

[00:03:15] I wanted to go to every screening I could because I knew that that was what I was going to get for that period of time. And then just the long, pregnant pause of waiting for somebody to bring it home. Because the response was tremendous.

[00:03:31] It was really touching to see how moved audiences were. And it was actually really exciting that... I felt really happy about the fact that it had premiered prior to the release of Killers of the Flower Moon.

[00:03:46] Though the whole time I suspected that Killers of the Flower Moon would absolutely support and help Fancy Dance. And I think it was wonderful that audiences had a chance to connect with Jackson, Rokey, those who were the festival-going audience anyways.

[00:04:01] And then later getting to see Killers of the Flower Moon. One thing I did notice with that shift that I'm really grateful for is... I think audiences were given a chance in a large scale to really fall in love with Indigenous women. To develop a...

[00:04:18] To develop a deep care for these stories that afflict so many Native communities of missing, murdered Indigenous relatives. And one of the things that I kept hearing a lot about, particularly when people connected with Molly Burkhart, the character I was blessed to play,

[00:04:39] they wanted more of her and her sisters. And people who had gotten that opportunity to see Fancy Dance as well would often speak about how they really felt like those two films deserved to be seen together.

[00:04:51] So it was a wonderful thing that it found its home exactly where it needs to be. With Apple, you know? Everything that... I feel like Killers of the Flower Moon is such an immense, beautiful story. And... Or film. It's a tragic story that's...

[00:05:12] Deserves the recognition that it got. And I'm so grateful that audiences have leaned into wanting more of that. Because for so long, we've just been kind of told that our stories are too specific, too myopic, too esoteric, whatever.

[00:05:31] You know, they don't have a universal appeal, but clearly that's not the case. So I'm very, very pleased that it gets to have its moment and that the world gets to meet and fall in love with Isabel.

[00:05:45] Yes, I didn't get a chance to see it at Sundance last year, but I swear to you, I have heard the words Fancy Dance since it premiered.

[00:05:55] And so many people that I know online were just so excited when the news came out that this film would finally have found its home. That so many people would be able to see it.

[00:06:06] I was thrilled because I too was waiting to see this film just from all that reaction. And I can just imagine, you know, guys, I know that you star in the film, but you are also an executive producer on this one.

[00:06:18] I can imagine how important the story was to you, especially with the larger context of knowing just how many missing and murdered Indigenous women there are. And every single year, there are constant reports about that.

[00:06:34] Knowing this story, knowing that larger context, was that important for you to sign on to this project in order to bring more of a spotlight on these issues that are constantly ongoing, unfortunately?

[00:06:45] You know, I had signed on to the project before I knew what the project was, because Erica and I had worked together on a short, on her first short out of a Sundance fellowship. It's called Little Chief. We shot that in November 2018.

[00:07:03] And when I was sent that seven-page script by Sterlin Harjo, who was her mentor at Sundance, Sterlin told her to dreamcast it.

[00:07:12] And Erica, being a huge Kelly Reichert fan, was so enamored with certain women and just immediately recognized that there was a Native character on screen in that. And so she said, it's sweet, because of course I wanted to do her piece.

[00:07:30] But you know, that moment of like, I don't know if I'm going to get Lily or not. And then I read it in seven pages. I just saw somebody create such a deep, immense world.

[00:07:40] You know, in a short film, you really get to see a filmmaker show what they can do, because there's such a limited time to do it in.

[00:07:47] And every single page, every single beat in that script echoed of something larger and more systemic and something that felt very familiar to me. And I felt like I'd found my indigenous Kelly Reichert that I wanted to make films with, you know.

[00:08:04] And Erica, when we were done with that one, I was thinking it anyway. I was like, I want to keep working with this person. But she talked about wanting to write a feature for me. And that was kind of it.

[00:08:18] She had this sense of the character being similar to the one in Little Chief, but maybe queer, maybe non-binary. Working and living within this world of like survival and very much in survival mode, like you kind of see in Little Chief.

[00:08:35] Somebody who's very resourceful and does it for the community. So she wanted a similar character, but in, you know, maybe a more well-rounded, not well-rounded, a more heightened genre.

[00:08:51] Then, because Little Chief was very slice of life and very beautiful filmmaking, and it was dynamite in a small package. But so I just, I knew that I was on board to play whoever this character would turn into and whatever story it would be.

[00:09:05] And then it was the end of the summer in 2020 during lockdown. Erica reached out to Mishiana, who she'd gone through another Sundance lab with and wanted to write this piece together.

[00:09:18] So when I saw that Erica accomplished in a very big way what she did with Little Chief, you know, Little Chief talks about so much with so little and in such a respectful way. And she did the same thing.

[00:09:34] She and Mishiana together created something that lived in like a more of a genre film, a little bit more of a heightened filmic world. I'd put it on the shelf next to Thelma and Louise and Paper Moon, but also with this deep social impact.

[00:09:52] Because I feel like if you're going to write a film about missing murdered indigenous relatives, one of the most effective ways to do that is to not show anybody being brutalized or murdered. Not show any bodies. Show the family that is missing their sister, missing their relative.

[00:10:09] Show the frustrations and the obstacles that that family who are often the ones tasked with, you know, looking for these women because the FBI sure isn't doing it.

[00:10:21] Showing the obstacles that are in front of them that speak to the jurisdictional inequities and the social injustices that make, you know, just simply protecting ourselves a really seemingly insurmountable task for Native women.

[00:10:39] By creating the world, both Erica and Mishiana grew up in a world with community organizers, with social workers, with people who are really well versed in the Indian Child Welfare Act and familiar with children being removed from homes.

[00:10:57] Erica had done this beautiful documentary about missing murdered indigenous women and was very acquainted with a lot of people who do that activism. And, you know, it's something that was not unfamiliar to either writer.

[00:11:12] So they were able to create a scenario in a world where these conversations were just allowed to exist and the audience is invited into this relationship and this family and then learns about it.

[00:11:24] And that's, it's rare that writer, that a writer and rare that two writers together will make something such so powerful and so expansive in such a minimal present way.

[00:11:40] It's a dream as an actor because you know, every small gesture that you can fill it in and imbue it with is speaking to something so much larger and more important.

[00:11:49] But it's doing so in a way that's respectful of the audience and is compelling and is, you know, and then this one just keeps the ball in the air with the suspense, with the mystery of it, even though you kind of figure out, you never figure out exactly what happened because the details of the case are not what's important or compelling in this one.

[00:12:09] It's the impact, the absence of the sister has on this family. I solemnly swear that I'm not a good doer. You too? Then grab your RUM-driver and experience the eighth adventure of Harry, Ron and Hermine.

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[00:13:09] I love the relationship that Jax and Roki have in this film, although you two get into some trouble in this film every once in a while.

[00:13:32] I guess I'd love to know, you know, building that relationship with Isabel, who is phenomenal as well in this film. I can just imagine getting to act alongside her. What is that rapport building like off screen that allows honestly magic to happen on screen for us to see?

[00:13:52] We were really lucky that we had a couple of weeks prior to shooting as Jax and Roki to develop a family sort of dynamic and relationship with Holly Sue Gray, whose photograph is Towie, whose image dancing is Towie.

[00:14:08] She is our Towie. She was also our fancy dance teacher. So she's the one who choreographed the mother-daughter dance, taught it to both Isabel and I, decided that it was the dance that Jax would have been doing with her mother when they were competing.

[00:14:23] So Holly, Isabel, and I on the daily were moving together, we're laughing together, we're finding a rapport, you know, as Holly, Lily, and Isabel.

[00:14:35] But it really lent itself to Jax, Towie, and Roki. And you know, we staged photos, family photos to place through the home and really developed that love of each other and this really immediate bond.

[00:14:50] And when we were ready to start filming, suddenly Holly has gone back to her very, very busy fruitful active life and we don't have her anymore.

[00:15:03] So it was just, you know, not by design, but just by device, I guess, just by naturally the order of pre-production and working with a coach in our fancy dance.

[00:15:17] We had a Towie that we collectively missed together and that we, you know, we would text and FaceTime and everything, but it was pretty effortless.

[00:15:30] And it was really a lovely thing. A lot of the chemistry Isabel and I have is so natural and inherent and was something that Erica just knew was going to be there.

[00:15:39] We never had a chemistry read. I didn't see her audition tape. I met her in the room at the production office with Holly when we were getting ready to do our fancy dance lessons and then in the evenings, our Cayuga language lessons.

[00:15:56] So then we had Kesa there, Kesa Parker, who was our language teacher as well. So there was always just, you know, just by design of the production, we were going through these emotions of learning these things together and of developing them together.

[00:16:12] And then I loved that on screen without really even knowing it, Isabel and I both actually kind of ironically have a background in ballet. So we kind of have a similar pace, a similar understanding of how to move and like choreography of a scene.

[00:16:31] I had no idea that, like, for example, the bait and switch with the gas to the ceiling, the gas pumps. I couldn't see her and she couldn't see me. We were on, we had the pump in between us.

[00:16:43] But then watching that frame later, seeing how we just moved at the same pace and it looked so choreographed.

[00:16:49] I think learning each other's, you know, learning each other's movement and our pacing and how we could counterbalance each other with our movements in a scene also lent, of course, to the end, the fancy dance at the end.

[00:17:04] And there's so much between Jax and Rokey that's unspoken, which makes it so lived in. And Isabel and I just found all of that really effortlessly. Without ever having met before, it felt like we'd known each other for her whole life. It translates very, very well on screen.

[00:17:25] Thank you. Lily, I wish I could ask you hundreds of more questions, but I do have to let you go. Thank you so very much for your time. Thank you. It's nice to see you, Emma. Thank you.

[00:17:36] Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for listening to MSSX interview with the star from Fancy Dance, Lily Gladstone here on the Next Best Picture podcast. Fancy Dance is now available to stream on Apple TV+.

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