Who Does Daredevil's Elden Henson Play In Killers Of The Flower Moon?
Contains mild spoilers for "Killers of the Flower Moon"
Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon" looks to be another masterpiece from the auteur, with a positively stacked cast that is surely going to be up for some nominations come award season. Of course, there are the big players, like Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, and Brendan Fraser, to name a few. But the great thing about a movie like this is that every so often, a recognizable actor will appear whom viewers may not have expected, which makes Elden Henson's presence a bit odd, to say the least.
Henson is probably best known these days for playing Foggy Nelson on Netflix's "Daredevil." It remains to be seen if he'll reprise that role in "Daredevil: Born Again," but he's not doing too shabby appearing in a Scorsese picture, however small it may be. He plays Duke Burkhart in "Killers of the Flower Moon," brother to Leonardo DiCaprio's Ernest Burkhart. One would imagine he'd have a decent speaking role, but he doesn't have a single line of dialogue and appears in only one or two scenes before disappearing completely from the narrative.
Elden Henson may not be the biggest name in Hollywood, but "Daredevil" fans will surely recognize him and may be disappointed at how small his role is, especially seeing how he plays someone from the Burkhart family, who are significant when it comes to the Osage Nation murders.
The other members of the Burkhart family get much more to do
The same can't be said for the other Burkhart brother depicted in "Killers of the Flower Moon" — Byron Burkhart, played by Scott Shepherd. He has a substantial role to play, with many scenes between him and Leonardo DiCaprio. But Elden Henson's Duke Burkhart is hardly seen and remains silent. And considering the movie already runs for three hours and 26 minutes, it's unlikely there will be a significantly longer director's cut down the line.
It's worth noting the film went through numerous changes throughout the development process. It's based on the 2017 book of the same name by David Grann, but Martin Scorsese adapted it to give greater emphasis to the Osage people. Scorsese admitted to The New Yorker that earlier drafts required extensive revisions before getting it to the place it is today. He said of the screenplay originally, "Our script was over two hundred pages, and one night we had a big reading: myself and Leo and [the co-writer] Eric [Roth] and my daughter, a number of people. The first two hours, we were moving along. The second two hours, boy, is this getting a little long in the tooth, as they say. It was just getting to be — we really ran out of energy in the story."
Perhaps there was a version of "Killers of the Flower Moon" where Duke Burkhart at least said a couple of things. But Elden Henson probably doesn't feel too bad. Getting to appear in a Scorsese movie in any capacity is an achievement in and of itself.