Leonardo DiCaprio performs Ernest Burkhart in the upcoming crime drama Killers of the Flower Moon, however he was initially speculated to painting a special function in the movie.
DiCaprio, 48, was initially forged to play Bureau of Investigation agent Tom White in an earlier model of the film, which was extra targeted on the crime plot line. His earlier function nonetheless seems in the movie — performed by Jesse Plemons — however DiCaprio and director Martin Scorsese realized that the venture wanted to convey Lily Gladstone’s character, Ernest’s spouse, Mollie Burkhart, to the forefront as a substitute.
“It just didn’t feel like it got to the heart of it,” DiCaprio stated throughout a joint interview with Gladstone, 37, for British Vogue revealed on Tuesday, September 19. The actor defined that the early model of the movie was lacking the Osage perspective regardless of telling the true story of the homicide of 60 or extra Osage Native Americans that passed off in Osage County, Oklahoma, between 1918 and 1931.
DiCaprio continued: “We weren’t immersed in the Osage story. There was this tiny, small scene between Mollie [who is Osage] and Ernest that provoked such emotion in us at the reading, and we just started to penetrate into what that relationship was, because it was so twisted and bizarre and unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”
In Killers of the Flower Moon, DiCaprio and Gladstone play married couple Ernest and Mollie. Ernest marries Mollie at his uncle Bill Hale’s (Robert De Niro) suggestion. Ernest and Bill then plan the systematic homicide of Mollie’s household to acquire their “headrights,” which offered them with annual royalties for the oil-rich land they owned.
DiCaprio known as the harrowing story “a completely forgotten part of American history and an open wound that still festers.” Gladstone, who’s a direct descendant of the Blackfeet Chief Red Crow, identified that the occasions that impressed the movie occurred “not that long ago.”
She added: “I don’t want to label this a western. I’m happy that it’s being labeled a tragedy.”
DiCaprio sang his costar’s praises throughout the interview, recalling how Scorsese, 80, knew he needed to forged Gladstone after assembly her through Zoom.
“There was no reading. … Marty just instinctively knew Lily was the one,” the Oscar winner stated, noting that there was a “truthfulness in [Lily’s] eyes” that got here by “even over a computer scene.”
DiCaprio additionally gushed about Gladstone’s “absolutely astonishing” efficiency in the movie. “She carries the entire film and the story,” he stated.
In addition to centering an Osage character’s perspective in the movie, the Killers of the Flower Moon staff needed to collaborate with the real-world Osage neighborhood. Geoffrey Standing Bear, the Principal Chief of the Osage Nation, has totally endorsed the venture.
“All these people worked so hard with our people. … It was just amazing to see,” Chief Standing Bear instructed British Vogue. “I just did a groundbreaking [a traditional ceremony celebrating the first day of construction] for some elderly housing this morning. I used some Osage words and I said, ‘Now I want us all to try to speak as good Osage as Robert De Niro.’”
Killers of the Flower Moon hits theaters on October 20, 2023.
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