Martin Scorsese Recalls Moment Leonardo DiCaprio Made Lily Gladstone Laugh on Killers of the Flower Moon Set

Martin Scorsese has revealed that Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio make a believable couple in his latest film.

During a recent press conference for the 80-year-old Scorsese Killers of the Flower Moonthe famed director said that the “heart of the story” told in his film lies in the character of 37-year-old Gladstone, an Osage woman named Mollie Burkhart whose family members are killed during the film.

“She had a good relationship with Leo,” Scorsese said of Gladstone. “I think you could see that in the scene where he’s driving the cab and she’s in the back seat and she’s saying things in Osage and he’s like, ‘What did you just call me? I don’t know what you just said, but it must be Indian for the handsome devil”.

“And she starts laughing,” he adds. “It’s a complete improvement.”

DiCaprio, 48, plays Ernest Burkhart Killers of the Flower Moon, a man who moves to Osage County, Oklahoma in the early 1920s to find work with his uncle, local businessman William K. Hale (Robert De Niro). Ernest meets, falls in love, and marries Molly—a wealthy woman from her family’s share of oil-rich land in the area—shortly after his arrival in the county.

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JaNae Collins, Lily Gladstone, Cara Jade Myers and Jillian Dion in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’.

Apple TV+

“And so it really hit home from that point on, they started to trust each other and work together and enjoy each other,” Scorsese said of how the actors approached the characters’ romance. Scorsese even noted that while the couple fell in love, Molly “enjoyed the charm of the scoundrel—and knew that [a] rascal [who] he says he wants money.”

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Killers of the Flower Moonbased on a true story, depicts Ernest and Molly’s relationship during several years in the 1920s during which white settlers in Oklahoma orchestrate conspiracies to kill numerous members of the Osage Nation in order to gain their rights to the tribe’s oil fields.

The film is an adaptation of the 2017 non-fiction book of the same name by author David Grann, which focuses on the FBI’s investigation of the murders. Scorsese, however, decided to take a different route with the film to prevent it from looking like a typical murder mystery.

“In reality, it wasn’t about who did it. I wanted to show who didn’t do it,” he told a news conference.

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Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’.

Melinda Sue Gordon/Apple

Scorsese originally cast DiCaprio as FBI agent Tom White, played by Jesse Plemons in the film. However, the director said that after reading the script, DiCaprio approached him and suggested that he instead play Ernest, who ended up being implicated in helping his uncle Hale commit a number of murders.

“He said, ‘You’re going to kill me. Now I want to play Ernest,'” the director recalled DiCaprio’s words. He went on to explain that the tragedy of the film centers on Ernest and Mollie’s relationship.

“You see here how it could work on a day-to-day basis, not just with a villain [reveal]”, added Scorsese. “No, here you see in the bedroom and in the kitchen with the children. That’s interesting.”

Killers of the Flower Moon it’s in theaters on October 20.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education