0:00

Fuck the game! Alright,

0:10

let's do this. How are you? What the

0:12

fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What

0:14

the fucksters? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron. This

0:17

is my podcast. Welcome to it. I

0:20

don't know when I started saying that, but

0:22

it seems to have stuck. How's everybody doing?

0:24

What day is today? It's Monday. I guess

0:26

it would be the 26th of

0:29

February. If you're listening to this

0:32

the day it's released. I

0:34

hope that things

0:36

are okay.

0:39

I think okay is good. Okay

0:41

is the new good. Fine

0:44

is always whatever, but

0:46

okay. I hope you're okay. I am

0:48

in New Mexico, hence

0:50

the slight difference in

0:52

sound quality. I'm in a hotel room

0:55

in New Mexico. I'm realizing now that

0:57

my chair is squeaky, so I'm gonna

0:59

have to sit very still. I'm

1:02

here as per

1:05

usual to

1:07

sort of spend time with my father

1:10

who is slowly detaching.

1:17

Maybe I should sit on the couch. This chair

1:19

is a bit much. Hold on. Let me change

1:21

chairs and see if this one will

1:24

work any better. But

1:28

I came out here to deal

1:31

with some stuff and to

1:33

deal with him back in the home state.

1:37

It remains a

1:41

bit heavy, but

1:43

interesting. It's

1:45

good to see him. There

1:47

is a sadness to it all, but I'm

1:50

starting to feel that that is just

1:52

the way this all kind of winds

1:55

down for any of

1:57

us on some level, but I don't want to bum

1:59

you. me out out of the gate. Let me tell

2:01

you that today I talked to Lily

2:04

Gladstone. She's our final

2:06

Oscar nominee that

2:08

is kind of coming through the

2:10

garage this year. She's nominated for Best Actress

2:12

for her performance in Killers of the Flower

2:14

Moon. She won the SAG Award last night

2:17

and I was very excited to talk

2:20

to her but very nervous. I don't know if I

2:23

am clear with you people about why

2:25

this show remains

2:29

what it is and why if you

2:32

still listen and each

2:34

conversation, despite me being a

2:37

constant, is engaging and interesting,

2:39

is that it has to

2:41

be for me as well. There is a

2:44

type of dread that I experience before any

2:46

of these conversations like any of you would

2:48

have heading into a conversation

2:51

with somebody that you don't really know but you've

2:53

heard about or that

2:55

you want to meet but you only know

2:57

their work or you've heard people tell you

2:59

stories about them or whatever but there is

3:02

a kind of very human

3:04

and very present anxiety

3:06

or nervousness about entering these conversations

3:08

because I don't really know how

3:11

it's gonna go. I never

3:14

really know. I don't ever know

3:16

and because of the way

3:18

I do it which is try

3:20

to engage and get a

3:22

real groove going and figure

3:25

out what I'm interested in

3:27

about them that they

3:31

haven't revealed necessarily or just a way to

3:33

get them to a place where they can

3:35

speak from who they are. I'm

3:38

not gonna say exhausting

3:40

because it's not exhausting but that's the

3:42

process that for someone like

3:44

Lily, I know it's gonna happen a

3:47

couple weeks ahead of time and then my brain, I

3:49

don't know how your brain works but this is the

3:51

same with everything that I do

3:53

that it just starts kind of slowly working

3:55

it every day kind of

3:57

thinking about it kind of like imagining

3:59

how it would go, figuring out what

4:01

interests me, figuring out what does she as

4:04

a person have in there

4:06

and how do I engage with that in

4:08

the small amount of time that I'm going

4:10

to have with her. And

4:14

it's a process, but it's not without ...

4:16

There's never a time with any conversation I

4:20

have with anyone, even if I've known the person

4:22

for years, where I'm like, there's going to be

4:24

no problem. I mean, sometimes with

4:27

comics, yeah, but it still is what it is. You

4:29

still got to figure out something to do. And

4:34

it's my profession, my job, but it's

4:36

also my passion. But

4:38

it takes up ... There's

4:41

a process to it, and it's an internal

4:43

process, and it's an emotional process that I

4:45

kind of have to work towards. Sometimes when

4:47

I know someone's coming up in a month,

4:50

I'm like, well, you got to make sure

4:52

you have your brain kind of

4:55

wrapped around the work that

4:58

this person is here for. Not

5:00

the thing that they're here promoting or

5:03

why I necessarily got this person, but

5:06

why are they what they are as an

5:08

artist and where does that

5:10

come from and what of their work

5:13

moved you the most or

5:15

made you realize that they were an

5:18

amazing creative person. With

5:22

Lilly, it's

5:24

interesting because the first time I saw her, I

5:27

had no idea who she was. The first time I saw

5:29

her was in the Kelly Reichart movie,

5:32

Certain Women. And I

5:34

was astounded, and I talked

5:37

to Reichart about this, and I was

5:39

astounded by her performance. It was otherworldly,

5:41

and I had no idea who she

5:43

was, but I could not forget and

5:46

haven't forgotten and will always remember her

5:48

performance in that in terms of how

5:50

she handled it or how she

5:53

dealt with the character that she was playing in

5:55

that and the humanity of it was

5:58

fucking mind-blowing to me. in

6:00

First Cow in a smaller and a

6:02

different role, but that's another Kelly Rieckar

6:04

film. But certain women, that was,

6:06

for me, I was like, oh my God. And

6:09

I believe, and I talked to her about it, that's where

6:11

Scorsese saw her and thought about

6:14

casting her for Killers

6:16

of the Flower Moon. But also,

6:18

there was this other movie that she did just

6:21

a couple years ago called

6:23

Unknown Country. And

6:26

I didn't know anything about it. I heard nothing about it. I don't

6:28

know if any of you saw it. But

6:31

I was like, you know, this is new. I

6:33

mean, she must have filmed this shortly

6:35

after or just before there was a flower moon. Hey,

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you take ones to boost your immunity or

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7:52

but it's an indie and it's about

7:55

a woman's journey as a native person

7:58

in Terms of her identity. Energy

8:00

And it's a very poetic movie. And it's kind

8:02

of a brilliant movie and I watched it and

8:04

I'm like, well this is. This.

8:06

Is where it's at. Yeah. This

8:09

is where I begin. You know

8:11

my conversation with her, my understanding

8:13

of her because it seems like

8:16

a very personal movie. And.

8:18

It was that works v the all

8:20

the work you're outside. Of. Killers

8:22

of a Flower Moon Where I

8:24

was like this is where this

8:26

conversation lives and in it's like

8:28

it's a slow and in an

8:31

enlightening process for me. I guess

8:33

you know if your job. Is.

8:35

Constantly enlightening to you or

8:37

or broadening your understanding and

8:39

appreciation of things. It's a

8:42

fucking gift. And. I'm grateful

8:44

for it so. That's.

8:46

Happening today I met a thing I

8:48

want to mention which is also very

8:50

exciting and was also a fairly nerve

8:52

wracking. Not nerve wracking but you know,

8:54

eight it's it's a I'd I'd put

8:57

a lot and as he seems man

8:59

But I talked to Carol Burnett last

9:01

week. Carol Burnett. And

9:04

she's ninety years old and see

9:06

Sharp as attacked and I drove

9:08

up to Mana Sito in the

9:10

torrential downpour and flooding to to

9:13

talk to one of the great

9:15

geniuses of comedy. And

9:17

we have to hold the episode into later

9:19

remarked: Soda line up with the premier of

9:21

the New so she's in Cobb Pomeroy L.

9:25

E. O that that's also has Allison Janney

9:27

in it and Kristin Wiig. It's kind of

9:30

a a comedy tour de force. I watched

9:32

all season I enjoyed it but we are

9:34

holding it but I just wanted you know

9:36

that I did it and want you to

9:38

give a give you a little were a

9:40

little taste of the interview so I this

9:42

is mean Carol Burnett for a few you

9:45

had a a pretty. Good

9:47

friendship with Lucy right? Yes, How did that

9:49

work? Did she see you and realized he

9:51

came to see me and mattress? Okay, The

9:54

second night and I was so nervous. he.

9:56

Came backstage scold me kid?

9:58

yeah. tissues. 22 years older.

10:01

And she said, a kid, if you

10:03

ever need me for anything, she was so

10:05

sweet. So like about four

10:07

years later, I was gonna

10:10

do a special. Only if I

10:12

could get a big guest star. So

10:16

Bob Banner, who was the executive, said,

10:18

call Lucy. And I said, I

10:20

don't wanna bother her, you know, it was years

10:22

ago. All she can do is

10:24

say, I'd love to, but I'm busy. I

10:26

got her on the phone and I said, you're

10:29

doing great, kid. What is, what's

10:31

going on? I was funfering. I

10:33

said, you know, I'm gonna do, but I know you're

10:35

busy. She said, when do you want me? Yeah.

10:38

So my husband, Joe, was producing our

10:41

show. Yeah. Okay. And

10:43

so Lucy was a guest and

10:45

we had a break and we went over

10:47

to the farmer's market to have a

10:49

little bite to eat. Oh, right there at CVS? Yeah.

10:52

Yeah. So to eat before orchestra

10:54

rehearsal. So she's sitting there

10:56

and she's having whiskey, six hours,

10:58

gonna knock him one back. And

11:00

she's saying, okay, it's great you

11:03

got Joe to be the producer.

11:05

She said, cause when I was married

11:07

to the Cuban, cause

11:09

they were divorced by then. She

11:11

said, does he, he did everything. He

11:13

took care of the scripts, he took

11:15

care of the lighting. He was

11:18

the one who invented the three camera system. Yeah.

11:21

And he was everything. So that when I

11:23

came in on Monday, everything was perfect. All I

11:25

had to do was be silly, Lucy.

11:28

Then we got a divorce. And she said, now I'm

11:30

gonna do me Lucy

11:33

Carmichael and do those other, the Lucille

11:35

Ball show the Lucy. She

11:37

says, I go into, I read

11:39

the script and she said, it's terrible.

11:43

It stank. There wasn't Dizzy there who

11:45

would have fixed it. And

11:47

she said, I didn't know what to do. I was like,

11:49

oh my God. So she called

11:51

lunch and she said, I

11:53

went into my office and

11:56

I said, I thought I've gotta be

11:58

like Dizzy. I gotta be. tough. I've

12:01

got to be young." She

12:03

said, so I went back and

12:06

she said, and I told them in

12:08

no uncertain terms, she said, I channeled

12:10

Desi. And then she said, and kids,

12:12

and she took another drink. She said, and

12:16

that's when they put the

12:18

S on the end of

12:21

my last name. All right,

12:23

so that's something you can look forward to. It

12:25

was again an

12:27

honor just to, you know, I can't even,

12:29

I don't know if I can really explain

12:31

to you the emotions and the sort of zone

12:34

that it, you know, I drove up there to

12:36

Monet. I'll talk about it when I

12:40

do the episode, but you know, just I'm

12:42

waiting in a hotel room in

12:44

the pouring rain to talk to Carol

12:46

Burnett. I mean, Carol Burnett was,

12:49

she was amazing and it's still

12:52

amazing. She is acting at 90

12:54

in this show, but we'll

12:56

talk more about it when that, when that episode

12:58

airs. All right, let's get you up to speed

13:00

on tour dates if you're not, you know, God

13:03

knows I mentioned them enough. This week I'm in

13:05

Los Angeles at Largo on Wednesday, February 28th, and

13:07

I'm at the Elysian Theater on Thursday, February 29th.

13:10

Then next week I'm in Portland, Maine

13:12

at the State Theater on Thursday, March

13:14

7th, Medford, Massachusetts at the Chevalier Theater

13:16

on Friday, March 8th, Providence, Rhode Island

13:19

at the Strand Theater on Saturday, March

13:21

9th, Tarrytown, New York at the Tarrytown

13:23

Music Hall on Sunday, March 10th, Atlanta,

13:25

Georgia, I'm at the Buckhead Theater on Friday,

13:27

March 22nd. I have to check if they've

13:30

added a show. Boise, Idaho, I'm

13:32

at the Egyptian Theater on Saturday, March

13:34

23rd as part of Comedy Fort at

13:36

Tree Fort Music Fest. Madison, Wisconsin at

13:39

the Barrymore Theater on Wednesday, April 3rd.

13:41

Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the Turner Hall Ballroom

13:43

on Thursday, April 4th. Chicago at the

13:46

Vic Theater on Friday, April 5th. Minneapolis

13:48

at the Pantages Theater on Saturday,

13:51

April 6th. Austin, Texas

13:53

at the Paramount Theater on Thursday, April

13:55

18th as part of the Moon Tower

13:57

Comedy Festival. You can go to wtfpod.org.

14:01

for tickets. All

14:03

the links are there and there's

14:05

more dates coming. Again, I know

14:08

I say this every couple of years, but

14:12

some part of me is winding down

14:14

people. I don't know. I am 60. I hit 60,

14:16

but I've been working pretty

14:22

much non-stop in

14:24

one form or another. As

14:27

I've mentioned to you before, even the podcast, the

14:29

emotional and mental effort

14:31

and energy it takes, this

14:33

is the job. This is the work. I

14:35

love it, but it's work. The comedy, all

14:38

of it. I don't vacation.

14:41

Brendan and I never take a break. I don't know

14:43

if you've noticed, but we've done a new show every

14:46

Monday and Thursday since 2009. We're

14:50

workers. I'm a worker. There's

14:54

no work that I sleep through. There's

14:56

no work that I autopilot. There's nothing

15:00

in terms of any of the jobs I do in my

15:03

life where I can just kind

15:06

of show up and

15:08

go through the emotions. Not possible. I'm

15:11

a little tired. We

15:13

bring you new episodes of this show twice a

15:15

week or on special occasions like last week, three

15:17

times, but we also have lots of things to

15:19

take care of after the show airs. The episodes

15:21

need to be archived and we need a way

15:24

to play them on our site. We need a

15:26

search function so you can find episodes. Then there's

15:28

also my tour dates and ticket access and a

15:30

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16:22

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16:25

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16:28

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16:31

I. Love her work. And it

16:34

was really a privilege and a pleasure to

16:36

talk to her. Really

16:38

is nominated for best actress at the

16:40

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16:42

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18:08

So you're here, this is crazy. I know! I'm

18:10

so excited to be here. You are? I

18:13

am. What's been going on? Are

18:15

you tired? I

18:19

think it would be weird if I wasn't. Yeah. Are

18:22

you tired of fielding similar

18:24

questions? I mean, only

18:28

if I don't

18:30

get to change my answers up a little bit. Got to

18:32

mix it up? Mm-hmm. I know

18:34

because it's very weird when you do sort

18:36

of develop a public narrative, you

18:38

know, for yourself. And depending

18:40

on who you're talking to, you're like, am I going to

18:43

throw something new in here? Yep. Can

18:46

I just ride this one out? It absolutely has to

18:48

do with who you're talking to and your comfort level

18:50

because there's just some things I know if I bring

18:52

up, it's like, I'm not going to contextualize this for

18:54

this person, you know? Yeah,

18:57

for this audience or whatever. Yeah,

18:59

exactly. Yeah. I don't know why

19:01

because I was thinking about it before I talked

19:03

to you. Like

19:05

I imagine the – because I was thinking about

19:08

your presence on screen and I've watched a lot of

19:10

stuff, but I imagine you're

19:12

one of these people that people just project an

19:15

infinite amount of things onto. Well,

19:18

good catch. Yeah, absolutely. I

19:21

think it's maybe kind of this open mama

19:23

face because we all do that to like

19:25

our moms and they just have that presence.

19:27

Right. But yeah, I mean, I loved when

19:29

he had Kelly Reichert on. I love her. Mm-hmm.

19:32

Like that's when I first saw you. I had

19:35

no idea who you were or she was to

19:37

a degree, but I'd

19:39

watched First Cow first.

19:43

And I saw Wendy and Lucy a

19:45

long time ago, but I'd watched First

19:48

Cow and I'm a big McAvon

19:50

Mrs. Miller fan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's

19:52

like her version of that. Absolutely. Almost.

19:54

Just the tone of it and everything. And you were In

19:57

that and it's a different character than the one you

19:59

put on. The way in in the flowers

20:01

of the color Moon is a thing. Killers

20:03

of the flower. No I cannot. The only

20:06

person who does like do it often one

20:08

do a lot of times. But but this

20:10

the thing with Kelly is when I watch

20:12

certain women. In. And you're

20:15

in it or the I was completely

20:17

sort of like screw the fuck is

20:19

this course has a squishy doing was.

20:22

ah it's a goner socio and I

20:24

see you on screen so lot of

20:26

like of those guy the only their

20:28

income on a sweater but yeah I

20:30

mean I that the intensity of that

20:32

character and just to be at the

20:35

longing and this dream sort of. Or.

20:37

It wasn't even miles, but it was

20:39

somehow an endearing obsession. Totally says it's

20:41

just pure country like isolation. The no

20:43

no of yeah yes Tell. he talks

20:45

about how even when she's writing and

20:47

her her studio or in her apartment

20:49

for too long she forgets how to

20:51

interact with people. would you go back

20:53

And societies like oh by making eye

20:55

contact for months and my like steam

20:57

rises to self consciousness? Yeah yeah yeah

20:59

yes yes. The like when you're doing

21:02

that. How now the is that she

21:04

was there was a first person, them

21:06

made you've been it. For human big films,

21:08

run yeah, how did that happen? Where were you?

21:11

I guess you know I had to sign

21:13

is not thrown in the towel on things.

21:15

But I had tried out Austin for a

21:17

minute. Some I hadn't I hadn't. Independent film

21:20

out cold. Winter in the blood. This kind

21:22

of created a full making family for me

21:24

both in Montana and Austin. For the filmmakers

21:26

was from there are you related that. I'm

21:29

yes I don't support on another the

21:31

first one yeah was my first introducing

21:33

audience. Yep and what we saw that

21:35

Montana arm but this one of the

21:37

filmmakers Sir Alex Smith lived in Austin

21:39

disease teaching at U T Austin right?

21:41

I'm in. There was a Suleman cent

21:44

of their slicer that was a good

21:46

place to go butts than some family

21:48

as has brought me back Norris and

21:50

then I was managing a Gray Up

21:52

to sell Winter in the Blood and

21:54

Nom and Reservation communities around Montanan Take

21:56

Digital Story told you that a. Grant.

21:59

For that. Oh wow. They

22:01

did, I just managed to. Okay. So I

22:03

had just moved back to Montana. I

22:05

had done a theater tour earlier that

22:08

year. I was kind of... What do

22:10

you mean? I went out with the

22:12

University of Montana, has an in-house professional

22:14

theater, repertory company, the Monterey Repertory Theater.

22:17

Regional theater kind of thing? Yep. What

22:19

were you doing? Like... Like I'm

22:21

the miracle worker. I was playing Kate Keller,

22:23

Ellen Keller's mom. Oh wow. And

22:25

just touring it to regional theaters? Yeah. To

22:28

like, you know, perform for... It's just theaters, but you

22:30

know, like rural places around the

22:33

United States. Oh wow. High school gyms,

22:35

old, old opera houses. It would just

22:37

depend on... So was

22:39

the intention educational? Kind

22:41

of, yeah. I mean, it was also,

22:43

you know, we were

22:46

gaining our actors' union,

22:48

our actors' equity point. Right. Because

22:51

you have to do so many professional productions to join

22:53

the union, and that one made me a union performer

22:55

that year. That's an exciting moment, isn't it? It was

22:57

cool, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was... Yep.

23:00

Got my card. I'm a union member. It

23:02

was wonderful. Often, yeah.

23:05

Yeah, a lot of the time. Like

23:07

what was the reaction to like theater in rural

23:10

areas? Kind of like

23:12

it was when I was a kid and we would get

23:14

theater come around. It's just like, it's a breath of fresh

23:16

air. It's something else to do. My

23:19

first times on stage were when Missoula Children's

23:21

Theater would come to our little reservation school

23:23

and put on a play. Yeah,

23:26

yeah. Yeah, just... Just hustle

23:28

around it. Yeah. It really turns

23:30

out for it. This is when you were really

23:32

young? Missoula Children's Theater

23:34

was, yeah. I was maybe

23:37

six when I did my first play with them. Wow.

23:40

Where were you living? This was in East

23:42

Glacier, Montana on the Blackfeet Reservation. Little

23:45

four-room schoolhouse in East Glacier. Sixty kids kindergarten through

23:48

eighth grade school. Yeah, I got a friend... I

23:50

only know a couple of people from Montana, but

23:52

one of my best friends is from Montana. No,

23:54

no kidding. And he talks about this, like just

23:56

that schoolhouse. His

23:58

dad had sort of a bunch of... of land and had

24:01

cows. So he had a

24:03

good deal with cows and he's just got all

24:06

these horror stories about coming upon dead cows, having

24:08

to wake up at five in the morning. They

24:10

surprise you. I was shooting a western in rural

24:12

Montana and we were like, oh, that house is

24:15

kind of cool. It's like, oh, there's a dead

24:17

rotting cow inside of it. Inside the house? Yeah,

24:19

inside this old farmer's house or this old lancer's

24:21

house that was kind of abandoned. I

24:24

don't know a lot about cows, but I've

24:26

been vegan for like a year for

24:28

not really ethical reasons. Health. Yeah, just

24:31

to try it. There you go. And

24:33

my sensitivity to all animals

24:36

is kind of heightened. Interesting.

24:38

You know, and when I see cows, I'm like,

24:40

I know they're dumb, but they

24:43

seem nice. Yeah, they're cute. First cow is

24:45

a great one. Like that cow is so

24:47

beautiful. She's so pretty. And you

24:49

guys had a... Well, you didn't work directly with the

24:51

cow. No, I never got to meet the cow. The

24:54

cow was on set complaining in between takes. I

24:57

think she actually like kind of developed a

24:59

crush on John McGarrow and what I've heard.

25:01

Oh, really? They had a very sweet little...

25:04

They had a nice chemistry on screen. It's

25:06

a sweet movie. It is. But

25:08

okay, so you're on the reservation. Do

25:10

you remember life there? Yeah,

25:14

we moved away right when I was going

25:16

into middle school. Oh, so you were there

25:18

for a while? Mm-hmm. Yep. All my early

25:20

childhood memories were pretty much formed there. Middle

25:23

school and high school were in the city. We'd

25:25

moved to Seattle, but then I moved back to

25:28

Montana for college and stayed. So it was... So

25:30

is that where you are sent folk? Not

25:33

these days. Oh, no? Not these

25:35

days. We still have our family home there. We still

25:37

have parcel of land there. Oh, really? On the res,

25:39

which is my dad's name, and that'll become mine. What's

25:43

the situation there now on the

25:45

res? I mean, a little

25:48

like res dogs. Is it? Yeah,

25:51

I mean, that show has just had such

25:53

an impact on so many folks because we

25:56

see ourselves. Oh, it destroyed me.

25:58

I mean, I couldn't... Create our

26:00

in a Match l Oh thanks. It was

26:02

funny because I think he wrote that as

26:04

sort of a full metal jacket take off

26:06

like that character was supposed resources as arts

26:08

and it's kind a guy but I I

26:10

want to be in it and I know

26:12

Sterling and they put me in that so

26:14

I just kind of made it the up

26:16

with my Ss. Whatever that guy was. City

26:19

In are very good friend of mine who

26:21

spent a significant portion of his adolescence and

26:23

a boy's home like that. Yeah said that

26:25

you nailed it you would you like exactly

26:27

lights his legs well know he to call

26:29

it Correction officer. May more the ego

26:31

of a guy you know in recovery

26:33

that has his responsibilities are still has

26:35

didn't like pop up? yeah you know

26:37

but it's so shallow. Yeah yeah yeah.

26:40

real stretch for that one thousand worth.

26:43

Of appear as I have a problem with

26:45

acting because rights I make all these choices

26:48

but him Once you get any direct known

26:50

as be me I'm just gonna be in

26:52

me. Does not

26:54

talking as much since amount of freaked

26:57

out by that. So watchable. A range

26:59

of so watchable. That will show you

27:01

are great in it. That was a like

27:03

that's it like a a heavy parse. yeah

27:05

yeah it was insane when I got the

27:07

when I got the sides because the first

27:09

episode that you see hope the in our

27:11

migs a pencil know rotten eggs and I

27:13

go back to Missoula I'm we were both

27:15

there. At the same time,

27:17

I hung out after college and stayed in

27:20

Montana until really certain women started popping off

27:22

in the name. One on the road for

27:24

it and est on the road. That on

27:26

he makes like. Megan. Sterling

27:28

both saw me do Winter and the Blood

27:31

forever ago. They were to the first people

27:33

that took notice of mean for what I

27:35

could do and when I got the scene

27:37

like it just had everything in there that

27:39

I want to do. And. It's

27:42

felt like it was written for

27:44

me and away so that the

27:46

the are incarcerated mom. Yeah, yeah

27:48

and it's just it's such a

27:50

poignant. Thing to has this

27:53

really profound. spiritual healing moment take

27:55

place in a prison for so many

27:57

of our relatives are incarcerated and said

28:00

Actually in the American West, the highest

28:02

number of people incarcerated in Montana, North

28:04

Dakota, South Dakota, like all these

28:06

places that we grew up are

28:09

natives. And to

28:12

play this woman who's essentially a healer, you

28:16

know, a lot of healers are really sensitive

28:18

to the world and sensitive people, you

28:20

know, colonization hits you harder. Yeah,

28:23

well, I think that's one of the things that, you

28:27

know, like, not that you

28:29

necessarily are a designated representative

28:32

of the native community, but, you

28:34

know, once people become more educated, which I

28:36

think reservation dogs did, because

28:38

the thing that struck me about it was

28:40

that there is a groove of

28:43

spirituality, humor, communication,

28:46

and community that to

28:49

most people is

28:51

alien. We don't know what

28:53

that really looks like. Sure. So

28:55

when I saw it, you know,

28:57

after having seen, you know, a

28:59

few native driven movies in my

29:01

life, I was like, this is a whole

29:04

world that has its own

29:07

everything. And this is the first we're

29:09

really seeing it. Yeah. With a certain... And

29:12

just how quickly audiences take to that

29:14

and feel comfortable with it. It's like

29:16

what we've been insisting for years. Our

29:18

stories, like, you know, you're told that

29:21

they're too esoteric or they're not universal

29:23

enough, but it's like bullshit because when

29:25

people watch it, they see something that

29:27

feels so human and familiar and immediate.

29:29

Honest. Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's

29:31

what it is growing up on a

29:34

res. People are honest, you know? Well,

29:36

yeah. And like, you're not judged

29:38

for what, for like material wealth. That was

29:40

a huge part of like the culture shock

29:42

of moving to a suburb when I was

29:44

in middle school, when your identity is forming

29:46

so much north of Seattle. Really?

29:50

Yep. So did

29:52

you feel that, did you feel

29:54

different? Yeah. I mean, were

29:56

you treated differently? Yeah. It

29:58

happened to be the year that Pocahontas had... come out for

30:00

Disney too. So it's like all the little

30:03

pot shots your classmates take at you. Can you

30:05

paint with all the colors of the wind? Were

30:07

they pot shots or were they curious? There

30:10

was definitely a pot shot over one guy in

30:12

particular. You remember that guy? I do, yeah. All

30:15

the girls had a crush on that guy. Of

30:17

that guy? Oh yeah, the next. The asshole. Yep, the

30:19

one who nags everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wonder

30:21

what that guy's doing. It's always good to go back

30:23

and check out where the

30:25

assholes end up. Probably

30:29

in sales. Yeah, of

30:31

course. Frustrated in sales. In

30:36

a horrible marriage. Who knows?

30:38

Yeah, when I went back from my high school reunion,

30:40

I was like just to see how like fat

30:43

and weird all the jocks got.

30:46

I was like, yeah, this is, I

30:48

waited 25 years to go back to

30:50

reunion. Man, my 20 year reunion is this

30:52

year. Are you

30:55

gonna go? You gotta go. You know, it's

30:57

being organized right now. I think it's gonna

30:59

happen in May, but my class has come

31:01

back together to schedule an Oscars watch party,

31:04

because they voted me most likely to win an

31:06

Oscar. From middle school, high school?

31:08

From high school. Really? Yeah, I've got like

31:10

the little photo, me and Josh Ryder there,

31:13

doing our little American Gothic pose. He's holding

31:15

one of those little men that

31:18

you use in sculpture. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

31:20

yeah. Well that's, but

31:23

I wouldn't go back until I had some success

31:27

that was visible. I mean, it's pretty cool to

31:29

walk in with an Oscar nomination

31:31

to your 20 year high school. Have you? It's

31:34

better than walking in and having people going, how's

31:37

it working out, the acting? Exactly.

31:41

You got tons of story about a

31:43

theater thing you did. Yeah. Somewhere

31:45

else. My 10 year reunion, I think, is when

31:47

I got certain women, now that I'm thinking about

31:49

it. So that would have been fine too. Yeah,

31:51

that would have been fine, except like then you'd

31:53

have to bring the movie with you. Right. Nobody's,

31:56

no, you're silly, right? Right here. Which

31:59

is a crime. people don't know who Kelly Rifton

32:01

is. I know. The last movie

32:03

was so funny. Mm-hmm. It was so funny. Kelly

32:06

is funny. I thought First Cow was funny. When

32:08

I was watching it at New York Film Festival, I

32:10

feel like I was kind of annoying. I mean, I

32:12

was, I got there late, so nobody knew I was

32:14

in New York. Yeah. Otherwise, I

32:16

know I would have gotten like an invite and been like upfront.

32:19

But I kind of snuck in last minute and was in

32:21

the balcony in the very back. And I

32:23

was cracking up the whole time. And I could tell

32:25

that I was annoying some of the people I was

32:27

sitting around until like Kelly like called me out in

32:30

the audience and I called back. Then I was kind

32:32

of fine that I was there. But...

32:34

Well, what's weird about movies that deal with any

32:36

sort of different race

32:38

or ethnicity is

32:41

that, you know, the type of people that

32:43

go to art movies or small movies are

32:46

usually heavy-hearted liberal people. And

32:50

they don't know when to laugh. And they don't know

32:52

if it's okay to laugh. So they're just sitting there

32:54

in a knot. And

32:57

knowing they're going to enjoy it no matter what. They're

32:59

not going to say anything bad about them. Right, right,

33:01

right, right. Because they would look bad if they did.

33:03

They would look uncultured if they did. That's right. Yeah.

33:06

But no, that giving people permission to laugh

33:08

thing is, that's also a very Indian thing,

33:11

I think. Because like when we talk

33:13

about, and that's one thing I love about res-dogs too. Totally.

33:15

And, you know, I just encourage anybody

33:18

to go back and rewatch Kelly Reichert's

33:20

movies as comedies because they're hilarious. Yes.

33:23

You don't take them so seriously. Otherwise, you're

33:25

not going to enjoy it. Just like check

33:27

off. Well, the dynamic between you and Kristen

33:30

Stewart was kind of hilarious.

33:32

Right? The disconnect. Yep.

33:35

And that, you know, her self-centeredness had no

33:37

sensitivity to what you were feeling at all,

33:39

really. Yes. And

33:42

just how much I hung on her. I

33:44

know. The scene where

33:46

you just drive forever

33:48

to sit outside where she

33:50

worked was so crazy.

33:53

Yep. You know,

33:55

just like, oh hey, how's it going? Yeah,

33:57

yeah. Casual. Flipped in my

33:59

car. But

34:01

like, I think that something that

34:05

is not your responsibility, but I think that

34:07

is naturally carried by you as a performer

34:10

is, and I don't know if weight

34:12

is the right word for it, but

34:14

the sort of gravity

34:17

of your personal experience

34:20

and the experience of native culture, right?

34:22

In the sense that, because when I

34:24

watched, what is it, The Unknown Country?

34:27

Oh, thank you. Oh, that's great.

34:29

I love that film. I mean, and that seems like

34:31

it was written for you. I

34:33

mean, was written with me. We were kind of improving

34:35

it as we were going. Really? Were

34:38

a lot of them non-actors? Most of us,

34:40

yeah. Me, Richard Ray

34:42

Whitman, who plays Grandpa August, and then

34:44

Raymond Lee, who's like the love interest,

34:47

for lack of a better term, just

34:49

in Austin. He's the

34:51

lead of Quantum Leap. Oh, really? Oh, wow. That's

34:54

what happened with Ray's career. That worked out for him. Did,

34:56

yeah. And then his friend, Ally. The four

34:58

of us were SAG actors. Everybody

35:01

else was playing themselves. The old lady at

35:03

the dance hall? Yep.

35:06

Flow. Flow just passed away this last year. Yeah,

35:09

but danced right up until the very end. Well,

35:11

I hope that woman who owns the place doesn't

35:14

get discouraged. I know. I

35:16

know. It's so needed. Like,

35:18

those dance halls definitely are kind of

35:20

going by the wayside. A lot of that stuff. And most

35:22

of the places that we shot at, sadly, have had to

35:24

close, because we shot a lot of that pre-COVID. In

35:28

Dallas? Dallas

35:30

and South Dakota. Well, yeah, but the

35:32

text is... Well, the arc of it...

35:35

And I guess the point I was trying to

35:37

make was the gravity of a

35:39

somewhat celebration of

35:42

tradition and legacy, but the

35:45

counterpoint to it is this

35:47

insane, eternal grief. Yeah. Right?

35:50

Yeah. And if you could play that

35:53

part in Unknown Country, that's

35:55

a grief part all the way

35:57

through. And you don't... really

36:00

realize it, but I imagine

36:02

that the experience of loss in

36:05

terms of, you know, the history

36:07

of the culture is

36:09

ever-present. So that

36:11

is something that is a type

36:14

of foundation that is unique. Foley,

36:17

yeah, and I think that made Tana,

36:19

the character that we created, her life

36:22

really immense because it ties into

36:24

her grandma that she just lost. And we

36:26

don't ever really expose much about her grandma's

36:28

history, but when he opened the

36:31

suitcase at the end, eagle

36:33

eye viewers might notice pictures of Haskell Indian

36:35

school in there. So grandma had gone

36:37

to a boarding school. Pictures of

36:39

her at the end, that guiding photo of

36:41

her like free with her long flowing hair,

36:44

kind of in a way that photo, while it was

36:46

real in the narrative, also was a transcendence of her

36:49

spirit, which is like kind of carried in at

36:51

the end. Sure, the wind. Right,

36:53

because the other photo that I

36:55

pull out of the suitcase where you see her, she's

36:57

got her short boarding school hair. Okay.

36:59

So the story I'd constructed for

37:01

her grandma was Foley formed and one

37:04

that I decided that the character of

37:06

Tana wasn't Foley aware of. Right. So

37:08

Tana was kind of adjacent to me in the

37:10

sense that I had, I was very close with

37:12

my own grandma who was a boarding school survivor

37:14

too. Really? I was one of her

37:16

caretakers until her last day. So that was real? To

37:19

a degree, yeah. Yeah. Well, we were

37:22

filming that. I only lost her last summer.

37:24

So we'd already filmed, premiered all of it.

37:26

And then my grandma passed away shortly after.

37:29

She did, but she didn't remember it. Oh yeah.

37:32

She's dementia. Yeah, I'm dealing with that now. Right. I'm

37:34

trying to put a positive spin on it. You

37:38

know, my grandma was so good natured

37:40

about it. Like got the right kind

37:42

of medication too that her delusions would

37:44

stay positive instead of like fearful. Oh

37:46

really? That was a blessing toward the

37:48

end of her life. What medication is

37:50

that? I don't remember. I

37:53

will text my mom and I'll let you know if, because it

37:56

was really kind of changed the game. She

37:59

was just very joyful. Oh, that's good. Oh,

38:01

I don't know the same jokes over and over

38:03

again. Yeah, and they always work. Yeah Oh, yeah,

38:05

you're doing a comic shop You're

38:08

doing the new audience every time exactly

38:10

my dad's favorite joke with her as

38:12

she was aging was hey, ma You

38:15

remember that thing? I would tell you not to forget

38:19

Then she'd sit and think for a second the answer was always

38:21

the same no She

38:24

would crack up just the irony of that

38:26

Well, I don't like it's nice that that that

38:28

she had that at least that

38:30

ease to To

38:33

be to be happy like unfortunately my dad

38:35

has never had that so there's no going

38:37

back to it There's no place that he

38:39

can return to where the joy

38:42

would come out Maybe there's some little early

38:44

childhood pocket that he can like crack into

38:46

well the thing I've realized about the dementia

38:48

is that you can't you have to let

38:50

go of who they were Exactly and

38:52

deal with what you're dealing with and then it becomes

38:54

kind of fun. Mm-hmm Yep,

38:56

because there's it's always surprising. Yep And you

38:59

really don't know what's gonna come out of

39:01

them Especially when you buy into the delusions like

39:03

you have to cuz you can't reason them out

39:05

of it Sure, it's like you guide them through

39:07

it to where they're like feeling. Okay, at least

39:09

what were her delusions There

39:12

were a lot of them. I think based on the

39:14

old Westerns that she used to watch really there were

39:16

a couple of times where Sometimes

39:18

it was like the Cowboys outside or

39:20

the gangsters outside cuz she also loved

39:23

old game And I'm

39:25

trying to get into the house There was

39:27

one time that really cracked me up though because

39:29

this is this is a Nez Perce woman born

39:31

in a log cabin in Lapway, Idaho on the

39:33

Nez Perce reservation went to Chamowah Indian school,

39:36

you know, yeah native woman Yeah, but

39:38

whenever delusions like the Indians are outside

39:40

trying to get Grandma,

39:42

I think the Indians are in the house And

39:46

then that that's what snapped her out of it. She's like,

39:48

oh, I guess you're right That's

39:51

wild that The the

39:54

because those gotta be really old memories. So

39:57

there was so that was something that

39:59

was available in

40:01

the culture that movies would come

40:03

through? Yeah, yeah, she loved films.

40:06

Like that was her

40:08

hobby post-retirement. She got

40:10

a VHS player. She

40:12

would get blank VHSs and she subscribed to

40:14

cable and would just highlight the movies she

40:16

wanted to record, build her whole schedule around

40:18

recording these movies. So like by the time

40:21

she was done doing that, she maybe had

40:23

like 4,000 titles. Oh

40:25

my God. Just feeling like to floor,

40:28

just these whole catalog. And she'd watch

40:31

them over and over? A lot

40:33

of them she never watched again. Never watched

40:35

it, but she had them. Just archived and

40:37

collected them and kept them in all in

40:39

a binder with like either perfect typeface, you

40:41

know, with her typewriter, because she always used

40:43

the same typewriter. Yeah. Or, you know, just

40:45

her impeccable, beautiful, like boarding school, Catholic school

40:48

handwriting. Right, right. Filling in the middle. Well,

40:50

that was something I noticed about the Unknown

40:52

Country too, was the focus and the sort

40:54

of like the menace of

40:57

what I read, because it is

41:00

a poetry movie, right? But

41:03

the menace of the

41:05

legacy of the, I

41:08

guess you would call them colonizers or

41:10

the executors of manifest destiny. So

41:13

you're dealing with what

41:15

are essentially cowboys in

41:17

the movie and your character, not just with

41:19

men, but with a certain like the way

41:22

she focused on these faces. The

41:24

only thing you could think like, well, this is the

41:26

great grandson, or this is the,

41:28

you know, that they're right. Yeah,

41:30

yeah, yeah. Because it just

41:33

felt naturally menacing and the

41:35

men were menacing in the movie. Yeah,

41:37

and I think Marissa, our

41:39

director, her original inspiration

41:41

for that was making that road

41:43

trip because her husband's a paleontologist

41:45

and works sometimes in South Dakota where

41:48

these digs happen, Hell Creek, the Hell

41:50

Creek bed. And then also

41:52

it'd be stationed in Dallas. So

41:54

Marissa got very used to this road trip. And

41:57

that was the exact one that Ana would take. And that's...

42:00

I feel like hard a MAGA

42:02

country is driving through there. There

42:04

is this sort of, especially like

42:06

with coastal liberalism that you're

42:08

raised with. She's from San

42:10

Diego. There's a very heightened awareness

42:12

of where you're at, but also

42:15

when you're meeting people, the congeniality,

42:17

the communal feel. Like

42:19

I mean, I just, I talk about this all the

42:21

time, having grown up in Montana, even though my reservation

42:23

is very liberal, like

42:26

the rest of Montana is not always. I

42:29

know. I gotta go play those places and I'm

42:31

always paranoid. Right. But

42:34

there's a real fear that

42:37

I think a lot of people who

42:39

don't understand the Midwest have of the people there. Just

42:41

this kind of underlying feel that the Civil War is gonna

42:44

start in the Midwest sort of a thing. But

42:46

then you're actually there and you see people really

42:48

taking care of each other. It's

42:51

always the outliers in any given family, the

42:53

drunk uncles in any given family are the

42:55

ones who are spouting this off, making the

42:57

most noise and that's what you see from

42:59

the outside. But at the heart of it, it's

43:01

like you just have small

43:03

town country folk who just want

43:05

to take care of each other. Right.

43:08

And there is an element of suspension

43:11

of judgment as long as you're not getting

43:13

into politics or religion. Right. It's just, you

43:16

know, there was, I think Out Magazine in 2014 named

43:18

Texas as one of the gayest

43:22

friendly places to live because

43:24

of this sense of live

43:26

and let live that's embedded culturally. Sure. Even

43:28

though it's like politics are very starkly opposed

43:30

to it. Yeah. Like, you know, your water

43:32

pump goes out, you rely on your neighbor

43:35

and you don't care who they are. Well,

43:37

that was a time where, you know, what

43:40

I tend to talk about is the loss

43:43

of necessary tolerance. Mm-hmm.

43:45

Yeah. And, you know, once

43:47

you remove that from the equation where

43:50

people can be shameless about their intolerance

43:52

or their, you know, personal morality around

43:54

other people, then it becomes a real

43:57

problem. Right. And there's no way to

43:59

bridge it. But I want to believe you

44:01

that you go to these towns and

44:03

if you don't engage them in a certain

44:05

way, they're going to be decent people. And

44:07

I imagine that's true. And I think it's

44:09

true if you're a pretty young woman too.

44:12

Really? It's different. I mean,

44:15

if you look like a West Coast liberal,

44:17

then it may not be the same welcoming

44:19

committee, but honestly, a lot of West Coast

44:21

liberals look like they're farmhands. Well, that's the

44:23

new thing. Yeah, everybody. Exactly. It

44:25

looks like they're in some old

44:27

Western picture. Yep. But I can

44:29

count the number of times on one hand that

44:32

I've felt like out of place or

44:35

made to feel out of place. Like I

44:37

don't belong there. But with you, it's like

44:39

not just a liberal person, it's a native

44:41

person, right? Yeah. Do people identify

44:43

that usually? You know, in the Midwest a

44:45

lot. Oh yeah. There's like this

44:47

hyper fixation on like high cheekbones and it's

44:49

like, you've got that, you know. I remember

44:51

sitting in that bar in Texas where, you

44:53

know, Tana's just traveling

44:55

in Texas. Yeah. There was

44:57

a local guy who came up and sat next to me. It's

45:00

the scene where I'm just lighting a cigarette and

45:02

I'm going to use the bathroom. And just like,

45:04

he's just looking at me, like leaning and looking

45:06

at me and then like talking about what we're

45:08

there and then eventually like disclose that I'm native.

45:10

And he like slaps his hands together. I knew

45:13

it, I knew it. Like he

45:15

was so proud, like he found one, you know. So

45:18

yeah, it's interesting when you're in, you

45:20

know, small towns, people wanna suss out who you are

45:22

and like ethnicity is a big part of that. But

45:24

they wanna box you in too, right? Kinda,

45:27

yeah. Yeah, I mean, cause then. I mean, they want

45:29

you to affirm their stereotypes

45:32

to a degree. What do you think? I think like

45:34

we all kinda do. We do it innately. Yeah. You

45:37

know, and then you make up your story for that

45:39

person and then you find you're

45:41

wrong. Yep. I do it here twice a

45:43

week. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

45:46

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Eke

45:48

out a living on that. Yeah, exactly. It's like,

45:50

I have an idea of who this person is.

45:52

Now they're gonna talk me out of it. Right,

45:54

there you go. That's the conversation.

45:56

Ha ha ha ha ha. But I thought

45:58

the arc of that movie was interesting because,

46:00

and I imagine it has some degree

46:02

of truth that whatever was keeping you away

46:05

from going back to the reservation for as

46:07

long as you did and then re-intering in that

46:10

community. And this is also something that happened that

46:13

I found amazing about reservation dogs was

46:16

there is a groove of

46:18

interaction that is slower,

46:21

more human, more to

46:23

the point and

46:25

that whatever the aversion of the character was, and I

46:27

don't know if you feel this now or how often

46:29

you return back, have

46:32

you explored that for yourself? Do you feel

46:34

comfortable when you go back? Oh, absolutely. That

46:36

was where Tana was very adjacent to me

46:39

because the switch up that I'd

46:41

made in her life was

46:44

if my non-native parent

46:46

wasn't supportive of my

46:48

native identity. Oh, okay. So I had

46:50

made Tana's mother a non-native woman who

46:52

kind of got swept up in this

46:54

romance with this native man and wanted

46:56

him to be all these things that

46:59

he wasn't. So then living with

47:02

her during formative years and hearing all of this

47:04

racist shit about my dad and my family from

47:07

Tana, Tana hearing all of this. The

47:10

name Tana came from a Lakota word,

47:13

pinnakila, which means hummingbird. That's my dad

47:15

and that's Lily's dad's black feet name.

47:17

So that was kind of... Your dad.

47:19

My dad. Yeah. And

47:22

I just kind of nod

47:24

to my dad, who's

47:26

where my native side comes from. Yeah.

47:29

And my mom, she moved to the res, though

47:31

she met my dad on the res because she'd

47:33

moved there to work in Head Start. And she

47:36

was very aware of where she was coming in

47:38

as an outsider. She built curriculum around what black

47:40

feet people had to say about how they wanted

47:42

their kids to be taught. What was that like?

47:46

I mean, my mom's just kind of a

47:48

do-gooder. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

47:51

But what was the dialogue in terms of

47:53

curriculum? What were they concerned about? Well,

47:55

one thing that she did when I was in

47:58

elementary school was she worked to figure out... way

48:00

to get Blackfeet language into our school.

48:03

So we were the first class

48:06

and this was a little bit before

48:08

language immersion programs started popping up nationwide.

48:10

We have a beautiful language immersion school

48:12

and it's in our public schools on

48:15

the reservation too now, kind

48:18

of based on the Kinkamehameha model in

48:20

Hawaii for revitalization. But

48:22

this was before that. That

48:24

came to my res when I was going in

48:26

when we were about ready to leave the late

48:28

90s is about the time that we knew. Did

48:31

you speak? A bit. Yeah. Like I can you

48:33

know count to ten, know a few

48:35

colors, know animals, know some bad words

48:38

like a lot of us do. I can

48:40

introduce myself. Yeah. Like what we're all taught

48:43

and you know it's just a process of relearning. So

48:46

yeah with Tana I had decided okay so

48:48

if you know Lily, if

48:50

me, if I had a mom that was somehow

48:53

disappointed by what this life

48:56

was with my dad or somehow like

48:58

felt like oh you know because my

49:00

mom could take teasing like she

49:02

could take it. Yeah. You know and she would. From

49:05

natives. Yeah. She would take it graciously. Yeah. It's

49:07

like that's part of how you know you're loved

49:09

as if you're teased you know. Yeah. But that's

49:11

foreign to a lot of people who are coming

49:13

in and you know there are a lot of

49:15

people that like end up with native people that come

49:18

in with a certain like amount of a savior complex. Sure.

49:20

You just see it all.

49:22

Yeah. But like my mom was very get

49:25

in and help and stay out of the way.

49:27

Yeah. So I'd imagine that Tana's

49:29

mom was somebody who was very intolerant

49:32

and raised her like away from

49:34

her native family. Right. And grew up

49:36

with certain embedded

49:38

prejudices against what it is

49:40

to be on a reservation. Right. I do see that

49:42

in some of my extended family. That

49:45

they're the desire to pass.

49:48

Yeah. Yeah. Or like with my

49:50

mom's family just some of the

49:53

stereotypes that her her dad. Your

49:56

grandfather. Yeah. Even though he like

49:59

grew up. up in the South, you know, and

50:01

it's like he worked on the Navajo reservation

50:03

for a long time. In New

50:05

Mexico, Arizona. New Mexico. Yeah. Installing

50:08

power lines. He worked for Motorola to

50:11

put the communication system in. So

50:13

he had this, on one side,

50:15

like this fondness. Yeah. And on this

50:17

other side, like, no, absolutely, my daughter's

50:20

not moving to a reservation. So

50:23

there was like, yeah, it was this

50:25

imagination that if my life

50:27

were more centered in that, which

50:30

it wasn't, you know, I was pretty estranged

50:32

from my grandparents. Didn't really know a lot

50:34

of math on my mom's side. On

50:36

your mom's side, yeah. Very, very much, you

50:39

know, we became an

50:41

intergenerational house when I was 11 with

50:43

my dad's mom and like grew up

50:45

on my dad's reservation. And it's like,

50:47

that's who my family is. Yeah. A

50:50

lot of times I have to catch myself when I talk

50:52

about on both sides. I'm talking about both sides of my

50:54

dad's family. It's like, my mom is so important to me.

50:57

And I do have cousins that I talk to.

50:59

And you know, I talk to my aunties, but

51:01

like, it's kind of, you know, a foreign

51:03

world to me. Really?

51:06

Yeah. So the character that

51:08

you're playing in, in Unknown Country, you

51:10

had to make a shift in that

51:13

you were brought up to be

51:15

detached. Yeah. From

51:17

your native roots. And I decided that

51:20

later in her life when she could

51:22

kind of differentiate and break away from

51:24

her mom a bit. She did go

51:26

back to Minneapolis, didn't like

51:29

reconnect with her grandma. Yes. Like

51:31

I made part of her life always. Yes. And

51:34

then took up the mantle of taking

51:36

care of her grandma. So but I

51:38

guess like in the, in these, in,

51:40

in First Cow and in, you know,

51:43

the big movie, the Oscar nominated

51:45

movie, Killers of the Flower Moon.

51:49

It's interesting because I don't know if you

51:51

came up against, you know, type casting when

51:54

you were younger and acting because

51:57

I know that is an issue with people of

51:59

a certain ethnicity. or race, and

52:01

especially with Native people and African American

52:04

people, did you deal

52:06

with that? You know, to

52:09

a degree, but I think I was warned about

52:11

being like that I would have to deal with

52:13

that more than I actually dealt with it. Right.

52:17

And maybe things were turning a little bit? I

52:19

think so. Yeah. You know,

52:21

and it's like I'm mixed,

52:23

so I can play multiple ways. I

52:25

do feel like in some circumstances

52:29

it maybe kept me from getting roles, because

52:31

I went to when I was an undergrad,

52:33

I didn't get cast in a whole lot.

52:35

Were you studying acting? I was. At

52:38

University of Montana? Mm-hmm. Uh-huh.

52:41

And my class work was great. Yeah. I got

52:43

consistently great feedback. Right. It felt good

52:45

about my scene work, but I didn't get cast that much. I

52:48

never really got affirmation as to why that

52:50

was. I did raise hell with the department,

52:52

so my freshman year about them doing Peter

52:54

Pan, which may have kind of, I don't

52:56

want to say blacklisted me, but maybe

52:58

some people a little more versed in wanting to work with

53:01

me. You were fighting for the role as Peter? No. Why

53:03

can't I? What

53:07

kind of place is this? Why do you assume

53:09

that me, a Native actress named Lily, would

53:11

want to audition for Tiger Lee? Yeah,

53:14

yeah. I want to be on the

53:16

wire. I want to fly. I

53:18

just, I took issue with them doing

53:20

that play at all, because the largest

53:22

population of non-white students at the university

53:24

are Natives, and it's like that's an

53:27

obscenely racist play. Oh, wow. I don't

53:29

even know it then. Oh, man. Peter

53:32

Pan, it's literally the lines in there, and of

53:34

course they cut out all of the parts that

53:37

were very blatantly racist, and then ultimately

53:39

treated as like they're the Natives to

53:41

never, never land. They're not the Indians, but

53:43

like in J.M. Berry's whole cowboy Indian thing.

53:46

Right, right, right, right. The lines were ugh-ugh-wah.

53:48

Oh, okay. For all the Native characters. So,

53:50

was they switched that to actual Native language?

53:55

Nope, they just made it kind of

53:57

a light sort of reminiscent wash of

53:59

Polynesian culture. which was also like,

54:01

okay, whatever, whatever. But anyways,

54:03

like Raising Cane enough instead of, and

54:06

maybe that had something to do with it, but I think

54:08

a lot of it also had to do with, I didn't,

54:12

I don't know, there were a lot of family dramas, but

54:15

I would get some, where

54:19

I wasn't getting cast in theater

54:21

main stage shows, I was getting cast

54:23

in student films with the new media

54:25

arts program there. So

54:27

that was really nice because that was students recognizing

54:29

that the one show that I did get cast

54:32

in, or the first show I got cast in

54:34

was a multimedia piece and people could see immediately

54:36

that I worked well on camera, but then I

54:38

started getting requests from media arts to do their

54:40

films. And it was great because by the

54:42

time I graduated, I had a whole reel. Like, actors

54:44

moved to LA and worked for years to

54:47

get a reel assembled. And you got here with

54:49

a reel? I didn't ever come here, but I did

54:51

leave, I

54:53

did leave school with a reel that we could

54:55

submit. Well, I think the interesting thing too, and

54:58

what I was gonna get at in approaching

55:01

Molly Kyle, or

55:04

even in the first cow,

55:07

and you played, did

55:09

you play a princess of some kind? That

55:13

character, kind of, that

55:15

character, I kinda based

55:17

on a woman in my family history

55:19

that I learned more about again later with

55:22

Killers of the Flower Moon, but

55:25

her name was Natawista, a

55:27

medicine snake woman. She was the

55:29

wife of a frontiersman diplomat named

55:31

Alexander Culbertson and had a lot

55:33

of money around this period of

55:35

time. Turns out, Janay

55:38

Collins, who plays my sister in Killers of the

55:40

Flower Moon, Rita, the one who dies with the

55:43

house explosion. Janay

55:45

is Natawista's great, great,

55:47

great, great granddaughter. I'm

55:50

Natawista's great, great, great, grand niece. You

55:52

are in real life. So Janay and

55:54

I are related in real life. That's

55:57

wild. Yeah, it's fantastic. And you know

55:59

that. That side of our family

56:01

is a very clean, cleanly

56:04

kept line. It goes back,

56:06

you can track it back? Yep,

56:09

that branch of the family for quite

56:11

a ways. But through tribal genealogy? Yeah,

56:13

just through family, like family oral tradition.

56:15

Oh really? Who we come from. And

56:17

you have some of them. But also,

56:19

you know, you put it on government

56:22

papers because we have pedigrees with it,

56:24

a lot of animals do. Is

56:26

that true? Oh yeah, blood quantum,

56:28

like keeping track of family lineage.

56:30

You have to have a certain

56:33

blood quantum to be considered an

56:35

indigenous person. So our records of

56:37

our blood quantum is very, very

56:40

intact. And you have,

56:43

I know I did a little bit of research. You have kind

56:46

of tribal leaders. Yeah,

56:49

yeah, Natawista's nephew was Mikkei

56:51

Stu Red Crow. He was the one

56:53

who signed Treaty 7 for Kainai Nation in

56:55

Canada. So he was, yeah, he

56:57

was chief during that time. And

57:00

what about on your mom's side? Big

57:03

old question mark. You don't know? I

57:05

really don't know much about my mom's side at all. Because they

57:07

don't keep the genealogy. Not really.

57:09

I mean, one of

57:12

my aunties did a genetics test and I

57:14

think there's like, so there's some semblance of

57:16

maybe a longer story. Yeah. I

57:18

know that there was a Dutch ancestor.

57:21

My mom's grandpa had come over from

57:23

the Netherlands. Okay. They got

57:25

to the Netherlands through France. And then they

57:27

got to France from Iran. Oh,

57:29

wow. Yeah, it's a strain.

57:32

Like, but I don't know. There's

57:34

no oral tradition as far as that goes on my mom's

57:36

side. I guess the question

57:39

that's interesting is that there's

57:41

a difference between playing a

57:43

person who is native and playing a native person.

57:46

You're right. Right? Yep.

57:49

And at some point, you know, you've been fortunate

57:52

in that you get the, you've gotten roles. You

57:55

got roles like that before killers. Yeah.

57:58

Yeah, certainly. certain

58:00

women But but

58:02

are you must be aware of that when you

58:04

have to approach a significantly? Native

58:07

character right to to make

58:10

sure the humanity is correct. Yeah when

58:12

it's a Essential to the

58:14

story that that character is native because it's getting

58:16

out of history. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely You

58:19

know I was a little resistant early on when I

58:21

was told that I'd be pigeonholed in typecast because I

58:23

was like well native people are Everywhere, right? There's a

58:25

lot of people that you watch Unfollow

58:27

and probably up on your playlist. There are

58:29

no idea or natives. Yeah there I mean,

58:33

I met a blackfeet guy in Austria

58:35

named Klaus Bikowski. We're everywhere But

58:39

um, yeah when I was playing like for

58:41

a role like Molly Yeah, even

58:44

though there's nobody alive who remembers her

58:46

specifically There's absolutely a legacy and there

58:48

are descendants and there's people who are

58:51

her living flesh and blood today And

58:53

you know the whole reign of terror is still

58:55

an open wound for the community Yeah, so

58:58

there's a lot of ways that you need to approach

59:00

it and I hate the word I

59:03

both hate and respect the word authenticity Cuz

59:06

authenticity at a surface level feels like you're

59:08

appraising a rug, you know Yeah, I I

59:10

was thinking about that too because the idea

59:12

of authenticity I think what I said was

59:15

that like if I was my authentic self,

59:17

I would do nothing I Am

59:22

with you on that lot for far enough

59:24

into this campaign, I just want to be a slug right

59:27

but you do like there there There

59:29

are components of of of charm and

59:31

vulnerability That I think

59:34

has been kind of put under this

59:37

umbrella of authenticity that

59:39

if you are candid enough and you are empathetic and

59:42

Exude a certain amount of vulnerability. I

59:44

think it's just culturally surprising. So people

59:46

like bow That's a real person right

59:49

there. Right there authentic self. Right, right

59:51

that element. I think it's something that is Easy

59:55

for people to access with my

59:57

performances on screen. Yeah, maybe why

59:59

you pick up on this people

1:00:01

projecting whatever they want. Which

1:00:03

is good. Especially

1:00:06

if you want audiences

1:00:09

to have empathy for your character and what they're

1:00:11

going through which was essential for this story. Because

1:00:14

for so long the focus was only

1:00:16

on the FBI element. Oh,

1:00:18

you mean building the movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:00:21

And then in building Molly, there

1:00:24

were a lot of responsibilities to hold

1:00:27

responsibility first and foremost to

1:00:29

her grandchildren like her family. Did

1:00:32

you meet them? I did. I

1:00:34

met Margie and I met Billy. Margie, her

1:00:37

granddaughter I can see likely

1:00:39

was one of the biggest ways Grant

1:00:42

was able to draw Molly as

1:00:44

a character in his book. Because

1:00:46

when you're with Margie, a lot

1:00:48

of that is there. And a

1:00:50

lot of Margie went into Molly. Okay.

1:00:53

We only had one, you know, a

1:00:55

good significant long amount of time together. We

1:00:57

had a meeting. What did she do? Leo

1:01:00

was there too. You know, we were just kind of talking about how

1:01:03

this love story would maybe be possible. And

1:01:06

though Margie was the one who

1:01:09

told Marty at a

1:01:11

meeting, Grey Horse had held

1:01:13

with, you know, all the filmmakers, she got

1:01:15

up and said you have to remember these two loved each other.

1:01:19

In my meeting with Leo, she was also at

1:01:21

the same time very skeptical about how

1:01:23

that could have been possible and how

1:01:26

we would possibly be able to play

1:01:28

it. Yeah, it's one of the things that

1:01:30

sticks in my mind about the

1:01:32

movie, almost more than anything else, was that,

1:01:36

you know, how does Leo or how does

1:01:38

that character or that person necessarily who I'm

1:01:40

sure is not, you know, as

1:01:43

compelling as Leo in real life. But

1:01:47

how do you hold both of those

1:01:49

worlds in place and still

1:01:51

honor the love? How do you know that

1:01:55

what you're expected to do is

1:01:57

kill your wife and then have

1:01:59

this are mentalized love

1:02:03

for them. I thought it was very

1:02:05

tricky. Yeah, and I think he did

1:02:07

an incredible job with an almost impossible

1:02:09

character to play. Yeah, and

1:02:11

it's a real Scorsese character. Yeah,

1:02:14

and I needed his performance to

1:02:16

give mine any dignity. That

1:02:19

it wasn't just about this like handsome blue

1:02:21

eyed devil. You know, it was, I mean,

1:02:23

on one hand, like

1:02:27

maybe rewatches the film and people commit

1:02:29

to like the little nuances in it,

1:02:32

which kind of bowl over you the first watch,

1:02:35

which honestly is kind of what most people

1:02:37

give any film is one watch. But

1:02:41

there was this whole guardianship program

1:02:43

set up. Osage is being deemed

1:02:45

incompetent of handling their own money.

1:02:48

Literally incompetent. Osage is the title that

1:02:50

was on your paperwork. You

1:02:52

had to have a white person appointed to be

1:02:55

your guardian of your money. And

1:02:57

it was of benefit to a lot of people to

1:02:59

be married to their guardian. Because then

1:03:01

I like just say, hey honey, write a check for

1:03:03

me to do this. And

1:03:05

Osage women, they own everything,

1:03:07

you know, culturally. Oh, that's so funny. It's

1:03:09

sort of like musicians today. Yeah,

1:03:12

what do you call a

1:03:14

musician without a girlfriend? Broke.

1:03:18

Homeless. But yeah. But

1:03:22

your character, you know, as it evolves in

1:03:24

the movie, are acutely

1:03:26

aware of this. Yeah,

1:03:30

acutely aware of some elements

1:03:32

of it. The thing that was

1:03:34

a big like

1:03:36

clue, and that came from, I

1:03:40

was so grateful in my language

1:03:42

lesson to be given this story

1:03:44

by Christopher Cote. It's a

1:03:46

trickster story. Show

1:03:48

me Gossi Coyote. That's one of their

1:03:50

trickster figures. And Coyote's

1:03:52

the like hedonistic self-serving

1:03:55

like fop. And immediately,

1:03:58

you know. passed around

1:04:00

the community and got permission to use that

1:04:02

analogy. And everybody's like, oh

1:04:04

yeah, absolutely, that makes sense. For who? For Leo? For

1:04:06

Leo. Yeah, I was like, okay, Molly

1:04:09

sees him as this coyote. She sees him as this

1:04:11

trickster. So that first scene,

1:04:13

calling him out for that, that was something that was

1:04:15

added in later. But it's kind of like, all right,

1:04:17

I got your number. I know how this story ends.

1:04:20

Right. Like, so Molly, you

1:04:23

know, finding this man who self-ad – you know, he

1:04:25

admits it, you know, I like to make a party

1:04:27

at night and sleep all day. He's sure to love

1:04:29

money, sure to love whiskey. Yeah. All

1:04:31

right, good. Yeah. Easy. Yeah,

1:04:34

I get you. Yep, I get you. I've got your

1:04:36

number. I can handle you. And you'll

1:04:38

enjoy money, but you'll also write my checks for

1:04:40

me. Right. And you know, you look good.

1:04:42

So this works for me. Right. So

1:04:45

on both elements, there was like

1:04:47

definitely a chemistry and a playfulness.

1:04:50

But there was definitely a mutual benefit. And

1:04:53

then eventually there became real love there. And

1:04:57

you know, the elements – Yeah, that's a

1:04:59

huge part of it is you see a man that

1:05:01

is so committed and so much loves his kids, there's

1:05:04

no way you're going to suspect that he would do

1:05:06

anything to hurt them or you. Even

1:05:08

if you do suspect it, you know, how easy it is.

1:05:10

And I think a lot of people who are

1:05:12

in relationships that are maybe not this

1:05:14

abusive to the point of being poisoned

1:05:16

to death, but you know, these dynamics

1:05:18

– Yeah, that's a very specific –

1:05:20

that's a systemic

1:05:23

gaslighting. Yeah, absolutely. That as a

1:05:25

metaphor is what it is. Yep,

1:05:29

absolutely. And as a

1:05:31

larger metaphor, committing to this love story was

1:05:33

a way of looking at it as an

1:05:35

analogy for the broken trust that colonization, the

1:05:38

United States government has had with indigenous

1:05:40

peoples. It's been nothing but entering into

1:05:42

trust relationships that are supposed to be

1:05:44

mutually beneficial and then just the continual

1:05:47

erosion of our sovereignty, which is what

1:05:49

you're seeing happen in Mali. And

1:05:52

you know, we work within the systems that we

1:05:54

can. We maintain like our own communities

1:05:56

as much as we can when you're

1:05:58

crippled by these situations. of guardianship

1:06:00

or being wards of the US

1:06:03

government of not having true sovereignty,

1:06:05

then there's not

1:06:08

a lot of option. There's not a lot of other

1:06:10

way out. You have to be very creative.

1:06:12

You have to be very subversive. You

1:06:14

have to be very together. And ultimately,

1:06:16

where we're at

1:06:19

now, though I think

1:06:22

contextualized differently, is still directly

1:06:26

related to that. Yeah. And we're

1:06:28

still continually entering into trust

1:06:31

relationships and good faith. On a

1:06:38

microcosm, this relationship felt like a good way

1:06:40

to have this conversation for what the film's

1:06:42

really about. And

1:06:46

with Marty, Marty had seen

1:06:49

certain women? Is that what you... Apparently,

1:06:51

yeah. Yeah, amazing. I'm not sure at

1:06:53

what point in the process he saw it, but I know

1:06:56

that when he did, he saw what

1:06:58

he needed for Molly, because

1:07:00

somebody like Kelly made a film

1:07:02

the way she makes films. And

1:07:05

I remember one of the films that I studied and

1:07:08

loved, still one of my favorite movies to this day,

1:07:10

is Adaptation. Oh, yeah. Charlie Kaufman.

1:07:12

That's great. Yeah, so good. I

1:07:15

watched that recently. And it

1:07:17

still holds up. Every performance, every character,

1:07:19

the writing, the meta qualities in the

1:07:21

writing that are so funny. I've seen

1:07:23

that film so many times, and I would just study,

1:07:28

study, study it. And I remember

1:07:31

Nicholas Cage as

1:07:33

Charlie talking about, why can't

1:07:36

a story just be about flowers? And

1:07:38

I remember thinking that when I was watching,

1:07:40

I was like, yeah, I'd watch that movie.

1:07:43

Then years later, here's Kelly Riker. It's like,

1:07:45

oh, this movie is kind of just really

1:07:47

about horses, kind of really just about ranching.

1:07:49

But it's saying everything.

1:07:51

I think like maybe the

1:07:54

neuroses that, that of a writer

1:07:56

that's Kaufman was kind of tongue

1:07:58

in cheek. Yeah handling in that

1:08:01

film is what gets in

1:08:03

the way of just the observational quality a

1:08:05

lens has and just the trust that

1:08:07

your audience If they've sought out this kind

1:08:09

of film, they're gonna make those connections themselves.

1:08:12

Oh, yeah, and and Nicolas Cage's relationship

1:08:14

with that tape recorder, okay The

1:08:21

way that he was able to sustain this

1:08:24

comedic timing with himself Yeah, that's

1:08:26

just like every actor's dream

1:08:28

is to play their own twin. I think yeah,

1:08:30

he's kind of an awesome character

1:08:34

in real life I imagine as well I Have

1:08:37

not but I love watching his interviews

1:08:39

like when unbearable weight of massive talent

1:08:41

Yeah, I'm out at South by I

1:08:43

remember he was just went on and

1:08:45

on in one of his

1:08:47

interviews about Yeah, I'm wearing

1:08:49

this because I wanted to look like shortbread because I

1:08:52

now I just really want to eat shortbread

1:08:56

He's a certain sir. You're a work

1:08:58

of art. Yeah an authentic weirdo. Yep.

1:09:00

Yeah, and Now

1:09:03

how do you weigh in on? People's

1:09:06

reaction to the movie, you know

1:09:08

in terms of you know, whether

1:09:10

it was correct, you know, the thing is

1:09:13

there's not We were hoping

1:09:15

that there wouldn't be a correct takeaway. Yeah,

1:09:17

I think how was that not gonna happen

1:09:20

I mean one thing I

1:09:22

just hope is that the

1:09:24

Human element of it that we you

1:09:26

know Marty fought hard for that like,

1:09:28

you know Initially was turned away when

1:09:31

the script was reaching or was was

1:09:33

revamped. Yeah center earnest and Molly instead

1:09:35

of the FBI Yeah, the um the

1:09:37

morning that you go through watching it

1:09:40

because you do it's like you're invited

1:09:42

into this relationship And

1:09:44

it was one of the first times in

1:09:46

my career in any work that I've done

1:09:48

on film I've watched a I've watched a character

1:09:50

I've played I think the same way the

1:09:53

audience is watching her instead of Analyzing maybe what

1:09:55

I would have done different right a cake or

1:09:57

whatever and I was just feeling

1:09:59

I was leaning in and feeling so much

1:10:02

love for her. And so much, like

1:10:04

I missed her when she wasn't on

1:10:06

screen. I was wondering where she was.

1:10:10

And not even in a way where it's like, where's my

1:10:12

coverage, where's my coverage? It's like Patti

1:10:14

Smith said it beautifully when she

1:10:16

introduced me at the National Board of Review.

1:10:18

She said it's like the new moon. It's

1:10:20

when it's not seen, it still felt. She's

1:10:25

amazing. She's coming. Oh my

1:10:27

God. She's amazing. Very cool.

1:10:29

That's authentic. Yes. Patti

1:10:31

just lives in it. Yeah. It's

1:10:34

so easy to be around. I just love her. Yeah, sweet.

1:10:37

But yeah, when I was watching Killers of the

1:10:39

Flower Moon and feeling all of these things for

1:10:41

Molly, in a way I didn't even necessarily access

1:10:43

when we were making it. Right. I

1:10:45

also saw the audience doing the same thing. And

1:10:48

like that connection is what

1:10:50

matters to me most, is the love that

1:10:52

you have for her. Because

1:10:54

then you feel her loss. It's like you

1:10:56

meet briefly her sisters and all of

1:10:59

those actresses did such a tremendous job

1:11:01

drawing these in a short scene, you

1:11:03

get a sense of who these women are. And then

1:11:05

you miss them when they're gone. Totally. And

1:11:08

that balance of contempt for Leonardo's

1:11:11

character and the

1:11:13

struggle for empathy. Yep.

1:11:16

Like you have when you're hearing a good trickster story. It's

1:11:19

like you're following the trickster narrative. They're

1:11:22

essentially the anti-hero or the complicated

1:11:24

hero of the story. They

1:11:26

never really win in the end, but you

1:11:28

learn a lot of lessons from what they

1:11:31

do, how not to behave. That's right. And

1:11:33

they kind of slink off. Yep. That

1:11:35

there's not a confident exit. Right.

1:11:38

They just kind of like, flit

1:11:40

away. Exactly. So like when I

1:11:42

got this trickster story in my language lessons,

1:11:44

suddenly Ernest made sense to me as Lily.

1:11:46

The whole film made sense to me in

1:11:48

a new way as a trickster story. Well,

1:11:51

that's amazing because that moment where, you

1:11:54

know, if that was in place, you

1:11:57

know, in the character.

1:12:00

that that moment where the

1:12:03

trickster, you know not unlike a

1:12:05

narcissist exactly is Revealed

1:12:08

in that scene where you meet out on

1:12:10

that dirt road When

1:12:12

you know everything is up and you might have known it before

1:12:14

but you were like, this is

1:12:16

the end of the trickster story So

1:12:19

go move on and destroy something else

1:12:21

you charming fuck pretty much. Yeah Yes,

1:12:26

I'm like you grew up I Was

1:12:29

obsessed with the idea the trickster for a

1:12:32

while. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so yeah, you

1:12:34

see it Yeah, suddenly when when you have

1:12:36

that that framework to apply to this story,

1:12:38

it makes sense in a whole new way

1:12:40

It does. I mean, it's kind of amazing.

1:12:42

Yeah, I I've gone through very sort of

1:12:45

untethered mystical periods Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's

1:12:47

definitely been times in my life where

1:12:49

I've been driving the ship and now

1:12:52

our mystic. Yeah Yeah, yeah where

1:12:54

I've been driving in a coyote you'll stop in the

1:12:56

road. I'm like I get it All

1:13:00

right, all right All right.

1:13:02

I get that. I'm being guided somehow

1:13:06

And I have to interpret this The

1:13:09

worst you got really your brain and

1:13:11

sometimes like the hummingbirds from your special

1:13:13

exactly. Yeah hummingbirds. Yeah, I'm very You

1:13:16

have to feed them all the time. Yep, and I

1:13:18

get it's ridiculous when I see the feeders

1:13:20

out to you Mike Okay

1:13:26

Yeah, yeah me came in the form of a bee once Yeah,

1:13:29

I still don't know what it was telling me

1:13:32

but I had a pet bee for a while

1:13:34

But that's but that's an amazing thing about you

1:13:36

know This the about native spirituality in general is

1:13:38

that you make room for this stuff and

1:13:40

it's not that it's Necessarily

1:13:43

real but it's a guide Yeah,

1:13:46

and I think maintaining that light-handed humor

1:13:48

with it. Yeah acknowledgement, you know sure

1:13:51

I think it's really tempting for

1:13:53

a lot of new-age philosophy to

1:13:56

grab our ways because we think they

1:13:58

always end it any way, yeah But

1:14:00

having that humorous approach, it's like, all

1:14:02

right, there's patterns here that

1:14:04

I'm noticing. And within

1:14:06

that, there's a lot of humor. Yeah. It's

1:14:09

like one of my spiritual family

1:14:11

back home, one of my ceremonial family was

1:14:14

joking about that with somebody who came in,

1:14:16

rolled in, an outsider who was invited and

1:14:18

rolled into one of these

1:14:20

doings. And this

1:14:22

eagle flew by and then landed

1:14:24

and asked, oh, Clayton, what does that mean?

1:14:27

I think it means that eagle's tired. You

1:14:30

want to take a rest. I'm

1:14:32

not playing this game with you. Right, yep,

1:14:34

yep. And that's a lot of it. What's

1:14:36

a ceremonial family as opposed to a? I

1:14:40

mean, when you go through ceremony, you're

1:14:46

in it with people that you have to have a lot

1:14:48

of trust with, that you come back around and do it

1:14:50

with again and again. What type of ceremony? Oh,

1:14:53

all kinds. Like this one, we'll just say, we'll

1:14:55

just call it a sweat for now. Oh, yeah.

1:14:58

It's part of it, but there's a larger thing that

1:15:01

I'm a little hesitant to put on radio talking about.

1:15:04

It's like our family that kind of not

1:15:06

related or if we are related, it's. It's

1:15:10

like the trust of, it's like, when

1:15:13

you do hallucinogens, you

1:15:15

need a guide. Yeah, that's

1:15:17

not part of our way, but yeah. No, but I

1:15:19

mean, the same idea that you're going to be vulnerable

1:15:21

in a way that you're not gonna have control over.

1:15:23

Exactly, because you go into ceremony to

1:15:25

bring balance to things ultimately. To

1:15:29

yourself, to the world around you, to cleanse out

1:15:31

stuff, to kind of clear the cash from the

1:15:33

previous year. I mean, there's a

1:15:35

lot of reasons that you haven't. How often do you do

1:15:37

it? Oh, not as much these days, but. You're

1:15:40

gonna need to after this press tour. Oh, for sure. No,

1:15:42

the way that I've always kind of looked at all of this is

1:15:45

when I can't be there, then it'll

1:15:47

still find me. Like, I mean, fasting

1:15:50

is a big part of a

1:15:52

lot of our ways. Sure.

1:15:55

And there was a period of time making this movie that we

1:15:58

were doing at the dead of summer. And

1:16:00

I couldn't go home to participate

1:16:03

in that part of the year where fasts happen,

1:16:06

but I found that I was fasting anyway. And I

1:16:08

felt like because it was for this wasting illness

1:16:10

portion of the film, Molly was like dwindling

1:16:13

away from being smaller and smaller. There

1:16:16

was a... I mean, it doesn't

1:16:19

remarkably read, but there was about a

1:16:22

30-pound weight loss during the process of making the

1:16:24

movie to

1:16:26

kind of particularly accommodate that period of

1:16:28

time of wasting away. But

1:16:31

the last most intense periods of it just

1:16:33

happened to hit at that point where you

1:16:36

fast. So I was like, okay, I'm fasting

1:16:38

for Molly then. Like that's

1:16:40

what this is. Because when you're doing a character

1:16:42

like that and you're handling a history like that,

1:16:46

it's kind of accomplishing the same thing that

1:16:48

brings people together to do ceremony. It's

1:16:52

bringing balance to things. It's

1:16:54

exercising trauma in

1:16:57

a way that's safe in community.

1:17:00

That's shared, that you

1:17:02

can be held. So

1:17:05

that's kind of how

1:17:08

I looked at that whole period. Worked out.

1:17:10

Yeah, it worked out. And there were

1:17:12

a lot of people in Osage country who would... People

1:17:16

I'd go sweat with that would invite me. And

1:17:18

just knew that I needed taking care of

1:17:20

for this role and felt

1:17:23

familiar, somewhere about that. Oh,

1:17:25

wow. Really? On set? Or

1:17:28

around? Or get invited and then go on the

1:17:30

weekends, sort of a thing. And you spend time with them? Yeah.

1:17:33

Oh, that must have been totally connected. Yeah.

1:17:37

And I think playing a character like this,

1:17:39

especially when... I

1:17:41

was talking a little bit earlier about my

1:17:43

hesitance to jump into the unknown country because

1:17:45

of just this history of the docudrama on

1:17:47

preservation. It can be just a poverty-born display

1:17:49

and be really exploitive. And

1:17:52

that's absolutely not who Marissa is and not what the

1:17:54

film...that film was. Yeah, I get that sense at all.

1:17:57

There was still that pride. I mean, the one... scene

1:18:00

with your grandfather. There was some amazing moments there.

1:18:02

And Richard is in Red Dogs too. That was

1:18:04

all improv. It was great. Yeah, that's Richard. We

1:18:06

called him the day before and asked because we're

1:18:08

like, we need a character like that. So that,

1:18:10

I was like, that's Richard Ray Whitman and then

1:18:12

called him that day and he got on a

1:18:14

plane that night and shot with us the day

1:18:16

after that. Wow. That was how we ran and

1:18:18

get, it was a run and gun. Yeah, yeah.

1:18:20

We were running and ganning. So what, what's going

1:18:26

on now? I mean, how are you going to choose, like, what

1:18:29

do you, you know, here's

1:18:31

the odd thing, like when

1:18:34

I talked to Sterling, he's

1:18:36

a sweet guy. Yeah, he is. He came

1:18:39

to my birthday party. He flew out, came

1:18:41

to my birthday party. It was a small

1:18:43

party and I was just sort of, I

1:18:45

like that guy. Yeah, that Tulsa, the Tulsa

1:18:47

LAX direct is the, is the Harjo, the

1:18:50

Harjo direct. Yeah, but it was so nice.

1:18:52

But like, they're like having seen all his

1:18:54

movies, you know,

1:18:56

leading up to the series, which, which

1:18:58

was, I think, the best TV show

1:19:00

in the last, you know, 20, 30

1:19:02

years for a lot of different reasons. But

1:19:05

he was here and he, and I'm like, what do you work on? He's

1:19:07

like, I'm doing, and I'm thinking like, we gotta

1:19:09

keep doing the native stuff. I mean, we're

1:19:12

not going to do a superhero movie. People

1:19:14

need to know, you

1:19:17

know, right? How do you, how do you

1:19:19

move forward thinking about roles? I

1:19:21

mean, kind of the way that I moved

1:19:23

forward from undergrad, any role that I

1:19:25

play is going to become in some

1:19:27

way an indigenous role, regardless if it's

1:19:29

explicitly so, which does a lot of restoration

1:19:32

of like, breaking down stereotypes of

1:19:34

who we are and where we

1:19:36

belong. Right. I definitely still feel, and

1:19:38

a lot

1:19:41

of it's the projects you attract, you know,

1:19:43

I, there

1:19:46

have been several times in my career, and I

1:19:48

think a lot of actors can relate to this,

1:19:50

where you have to audition for something because it's

1:19:52

too good of a connection, or you're auditioning for

1:19:55

the casting director more than you are for the

1:19:57

role, whatever it is. I, a lot,

1:20:00

lot of times really phone it in if I don't want it.

1:20:02

Okay intentional failure I'm all for

1:20:04

it. A bit yeah. Yeah, polite failure. I'm

1:20:07

gonna polish this so that I'll they'll

1:20:09

think of me for other stuff. Oh good.

1:20:12

It's like just drop a stitch somewhere

1:20:14

if it's not too. Sure. That's some

1:20:16

controlled craft there. I mean sometimes it

1:20:18

just happens that way. But

1:20:21

I do find that the roles that find me

1:20:23

are ones that I'm really really excited about

1:20:25

and it's um you know there's been a

1:20:27

lot of offers and things that have been wonderful but

1:20:30

haven't really felt like quite right for

1:20:32

the next move. Yeah. This next one

1:20:34

I'm doing I'm so excited about because

1:20:36

it continues it

1:20:39

feels so full circle in a lot

1:20:41

of ways you know going back

1:20:43

to adaptation being like my um

1:20:45

my little mm-hmm like masterclass of

1:20:48

acting and everything. My

1:20:50

next film is a Charlie Kaufman

1:20:52

script. Wow. An adaptation of a

1:20:54

beautiful novel by Oko Gala called

1:20:56

the Memory Police. Huh. And it's

1:20:59

a nondescript island and a

1:21:01

nondescript time so it's like

1:21:03

nowhere therefore everywhere. Right. And

1:21:06

it's you know a sci-fi in the way like

1:21:08

Eternal Sunshine to the Spotless Mind is a sci-fi

1:21:10

dealing with the subconscious dealing

1:21:14

with memory. Uh-huh. So it's.

1:21:17

Is he directing? No no the

1:21:20

directors read Murano who started out as

1:21:22

a DP. Okay. And still is you

1:21:24

know very gifted cinematographer who worked

1:21:26

with she shot vinyl for Marty. Okay.

1:21:29

She and Rodrigo are very close he was like

1:21:31

kind of a mentor for her. Okay. And

1:21:34

she's um yeah she started

1:21:36

into her directing journey and has done

1:21:38

a few features. That's good that's good because like

1:21:40

if Charlie directs it you'll get to a point

1:21:42

in the movie would be like wait what's what's

1:21:44

happening. Rewind

1:21:47

it. I gotta go back.

1:21:50

Go back. Yes you watched

1:21:52

I'm thinking of ending things

1:21:54

too. Yeah I did and

1:21:56

also the other one the

1:21:58

synecdoche. Oh my

1:22:00

God. I love Philip Seymour Hoffman.

1:22:02

Oh, I love him too. But that movie

1:22:04

at some point, I think there's a lot

1:22:06

here and I'm only getting a very little

1:22:08

of it. Mm-hmm. Yep.

1:22:12

And it's one of those ones you got to go back to. I

1:22:14

kind of tried to watch that movie the same way. I watch a

1:22:16

Beckett play. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's

1:22:18

right. You just got to let it

1:22:21

happen to you. Did you watch that animated thing, Anomalisa?

1:22:23

Yes. Oh my God. It's incredible.

1:22:25

That's the best thing ever. Yep. Yep.

1:22:28

It was intuitive about humanness.

1:22:31

Yep. And it's puppets. I

1:22:33

know. It was mind-blowing to me. The guy

1:22:35

on the road. Yep. Very

1:22:38

existential. Yeah, yeah. Well, it

1:22:40

was great talking to you. You too.

1:22:43

You feel good? Thank you. I

1:22:45

feel good. Me too. Where

1:22:47

are you going now? Where am I going now? You got a

1:22:49

TV thing? Yeah, I got a... I know

1:22:52

I've got to get glam touched up.

1:22:54

Oh. There's probably a

1:22:56

panicking manager out there. I know there's cameras.

1:22:59

Okay. All right. Well, good luck.

1:23:02

I hope you win. Thank you. It would be

1:23:04

nice to win. It would

1:23:06

be nice, but it also would be nice not to,

1:23:08

you know? Okay. You

1:23:10

tell yourself what you have to. Keep

1:23:12

your expectations low and then you're always

1:23:15

surprised. You're always quite... Preaching to the

1:23:17

choir. I'm low to negative is where

1:23:19

I go. You're the

1:23:21

most jovial misanthrope I've ever met. It's

1:23:26

all about self-hatred. It's not... I

1:23:29

just project it, but it's easy to reel it in. Take

1:23:33

care. Thank you, Mark. What

1:23:40

a joy, people. And

1:23:42

I don't throw that word around. What

1:23:44

a joy was to talk to Lily

1:23:46

Gladstone. Killers of the Flower Moon is

1:23:48

now available to buy or rent on

1:23:50

digital platforms and is streaming on Apple

1:23:52

TV+. Okay, friends. Hang

1:23:55

out a second. We'll see you next time.

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registered broker dealer. Hey,

1:25:17

to get to know some of the people Lilly and I

1:25:19

were talking about go check out episode 1424

1:25:22

with Kelly Reichart and episode 1252 with

1:25:24

Sterling Harjo. That

1:25:27

episode was the first time I met Sterling before

1:25:30

I did a guest role on reservation dogs. You're

1:25:32

having a hard time figuring out where to premiere

1:25:34

this and they were going to do it at

1:25:36

Hollywood Forever. If

1:25:38

people don't know, Hollywood Forever is this event. It's

1:25:41

a cemetery with a lot of famous actors. It's

1:25:44

a famous cemetery but they do movies

1:25:46

there. We

1:25:49

can't do it inside. Is that the thing? They wanted

1:25:51

to find a place to screen the premiere of reservation

1:25:53

dogs. I have a meeting. I have

1:25:55

a meeting. FX is amazing. work

1:26:00

with creatively like free. Yeah.

1:26:03

Like let's do everything. But we have a meeting and

1:26:05

with marketing they're like, yeah, we're going to think about

1:26:08

doing the premiere here at this. It's

1:26:10

a really great, this is cemetery. I was like, oh shit.

1:26:12

I was like, look man, none of

1:26:14

the Indians are going to show up. Ain't

1:26:17

nobody showing up, including myself to

1:26:19

the cemetery. And he's like, I was like,

1:26:22

we're going to have to find someplace. I

1:26:24

was like, yeah, we're glad we asked you.

1:26:27

I was like, man, they got Navajo filmmakers on this thing. They're

1:26:29

not going to show up, man. They

1:26:31

won't even stand across the street from this

1:26:33

place. You know, too much. That

1:26:35

episode 1252 and Kelly Reichart is

1:26:37

episode 1424. They're available for

1:26:40

free in whatever podcast app you're using

1:26:42

right now to get every episode of

1:26:44

WTF ad free. Sign up for WTF

1:26:46

plus by going to the link in

1:26:48

the episode description or go to wtfpod.com

1:26:50

and click on WTF plus. And

1:26:53

a reminder before we go, this podcast is

1:26:55

hosted by a cast. Here's

1:26:58

some archived guitar. God

1:27:00

knows there's enough of it. Thank

1:27:58

you. Boomer

1:28:17

lives, Monkey

1:28:20

and LaFonda, Cat

1:28:22

Angels everywhere.