Yellowstone's Taylor Sheridan Is Delusional, Says Killers Of The Flower Moon Star
Lily Gladstone is set to take her career to a whole new level in the role of Mollie Burkhart in "Killers of the Flower Moon," from director Martin Scorsese. Hollywood has a pretty poor track record on handling stories about Native American characters and historical events, but during the COVID pandemic, it's been reported that "Flower Moon" underwent a major reworking from the script up to focus less on the white FBI agents and detectives working to solve the real-life Osage murders in Oklahoma in the early 1920s and more on the Osage community that was terrorized by them.
As a working Native American actress, Gladstone knows as well as anyone that projects like "Killers of the Flower Moon" don't come around too often. In an interview with Vulture to promote the movie (done before the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike), she delivered some concise and to-the-point criticism of another major Hollywood outing in the Western genre: Taylor Sheridan's smash hit "Yellowstone."
Gladstone's opinion on the show is described in the profile like this: "She'll happily dunk on the cowboy mythmaking of Taylor Sheridan ('Delusional! Deplorable!')." But unfortunately, there's no further elaboration on those dunks to be found in the article.
Lily Gladstone auditioned for Yellowstone several times even though she isn't a fan
Lily Gladstone did add one additional thought on "Yellowstone" that was published in the Vulture interview. "No offense to the Native talent in ['Yellowstone']," Gladstone said. "I auditioned several times. That's what we had."
Gladstone didn't go into any more detail about her thoughts on "Yellowstone," at least not on the record, but the show has engendered plenty of controversy on the topic of Native American representation over the years. One "Yellowstone" casting controversy was centered on the casting of Kelsey Asbille in the role of Monica Dutton, while Cherokee Nation citizen Liza Black has criticized the show for its "white desire to control the narrative" in High Country News. So there's no shortage of elements of "Yellowstone" that Gladstone could have been referring to.
The good news is, Gladstone is now in a position where she can wield some influence of her own in Hollywood and possibly improve the situation for Native American-centered projects. In the Vulture interview, she mentioned a couple of specific dream movies she has in mind for her future career: biopics about jazz singer Mildred Bailey and folk artist Karen Dalton, who were both of Native ancestry. Whether those projects materialize or not, it seems pretty certain that Gladstone won't be auditioning for "Yellowstone" again.