Leonardo DiCaprio & Lily Gladstone Break Down 'Killers of the Flower Moon' Table Scene

Vanity Fair

Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone discuss one of the most emblematic scenes from their film 'Killer of the Flower Moon.' Get their full breakdown of the table scene, from the intricate details included as cultural symbols to working alongside Martin Scorcese to create the poignant moment shared between characters at a critical time in their lives.  Director: Anna O'Donohue Director of Photography: Steve Montgomery Editor: Rock Paper Scissors Guests: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone Producer: Frank Cosgriff, Benjamin Whitley Line Producer: Romeeka Powell Associate Producer: Meb Beyene, Rafael Vasquez Production Manager: Kayla Rodriguez Production Coordinator: Tanía Jones Talent Booker: Meredith Judkins Camera Operator: Tom Montgomery Gaffer: Tim O'Connell Sound Mixer: Niall Farrelly Production Assistant: Max Montgomery, Anne Schmitz

Transcript

00:00 Look what I subconsciously did here. I gave you devil horns and a halo.

00:04 Yep, look at that.

00:05 Look at that.

00:06 Hi, I'm Lily Gladstone.

00:07 And I'm Leonardo DiCaprio.

00:09 And this is Notes on a Scene.

00:11 Killers of the flower moon.

00:14 You live in this house just for your mother?

00:19 I take care for her.

00:21 And you live with your uncle?

00:25 Yes, yes. You know him?

00:27 Since I can remember.

00:30 He's a nice man.

00:31 I remember this was one of our first scenes that we did.

00:35 And it was obviously the initial flirtation process and getting to know one another.

00:41 But we didn't know the context of how much Hale had planned this or how much it was an organic meeting between the two characters.

00:50 Ernest is a little bit in the hot seat, getting the 20 questions.

00:54 You see in Molly's eyes, I think, that she knows what she's dealing with to a certain extent.

00:59 But, you know, he seems somewhat easygoing.

01:02 I know there's certain elements to him that aren't perfect, but...

01:06 What man is.

01:07 Point taken.

01:11 I remember how much Jackie talked about your costume through here.

01:15 See, like, the little kind of rough edges.

01:19 Clearly, this is your only coat. It's worn right there.

01:23 Your center part.

01:25 I remember we talked about the center part, the side part, where he becomes more of a dandy.

01:30 He accumulates himself into the household.

01:33 He wants to look upper class.

01:35 And then brilliant Sean still giving you your little cabby-like hair.

01:39 Here, I give you devil horns and an angel halo.

01:41 Yeah, you gave me a devil horn and a halo.

01:42 Yep, look at that.

01:43 Look at that.

01:44 Jack Fisk and the whole art department, including Addie Roanhorse, a local.

01:49 A lot of the things that you see belong to Osage families and come from this era.

01:54 These red spode dishes come from the Red Corn family.

01:59 Every year when they host people at their camp and feed people during their dances in the summer,

02:05 they would use this set.

02:07 But this summer, they had rented plates.

02:10 So now these dishes, this very cup that Leo's drinking out of,

02:14 is back in circulation with the Red Corns and is feeding people every summer.

02:19 I forgot that.

02:21 Man, you have a good memory.

02:22 Why did you come here?

02:24 For what?

02:26 To live here.

02:28 Yes, I'll live here.

02:31 Why?

02:34 I love that when this scene was written out,

02:36 it was, I think, originally accommodating for the language barrier.

02:40 And then we decided Molly was way more fluent in English.

02:43 You know, we're so used to seeing Indians in film speaking in broken English

02:47 and not really following fully.

02:49 But here it's like Ernest is the one who's kind of not tracking.

02:52 He's not the sharpest tool in the shed.

02:55 Very early on in the production, actually, I was considering making him even slower

03:00 because he couldn't really put a sentence together.

03:03 He really couldn't.

03:04 He was, in the testimony, in his writing, I was like,

03:07 "Wow, either this man's illiterate or there's something missing there."

03:12 But the more we investigated all of this, yes, of course,

03:16 he was intricately a part of this manipulation process.

03:20 But at this point, we're keeping it a little bit of a gray area, I'd say.

03:25 Why?

03:26 Oh, for my uncle.

03:30 I work with him.

03:32 Your brother is Brian?

03:40 Byron, that's right.

03:41 Byron.

03:42 There is no one way that this man's name is recorded in history.

03:46 The community remembers him as both Brian and Byron, and I forget which is which.

03:51 When they speak about him, they say one way,

03:53 but it's written on his headstone the other way,

03:55 which was pretty common back then.

03:57 Are you scared of him?

03:59 My brother?

04:01 Who?

04:03 Your uncle.

04:04 Well, no.

04:10 Oh, he's the king of the Osage Hills.

04:14 He's the nicest man in the world.

04:17 I know if you cross him, what he can do.

04:20 No, I'm my own man. I do my own work.

04:24 I do my own work. He does no work.

04:27 Is it just the fact that he's a little bit slow and dim,

04:32 that he doesn't know anything about his uncle,

04:35 or the fact that he talks about the fact that he's a businessman

04:38 when he really has no business,

04:40 and is barely a cab driver at that point.

04:44 Right.

04:45 But he's putting on a show. He's peacocking for her.

04:47 He's making himself out to be something that he's not.

04:51 I'm a businessman.

04:53 Thanks.

04:55 There you go.

05:05 There's only two real scenes where I smoke a cigarette.

05:08 And there are these bookmarked scenes where we're initially starting to flirt.

05:13 We share tobacco, and it's like, "Oh yeah, I smoke.

05:16 We're going to share everything, yes.

05:18 We have a lot in common."

05:19 And at the end, where I sort of have to go back on my word in the trial,

05:24 and I'm completely manipulating and lying to her,

05:27 saying that, "No, I was beaten by the FBI.

05:30 None of this stuff is true about my..."

05:32 Lying again.

05:33 I was lying again, and we start to share tobacco.

05:37 Molly is wearing two Wabanka pins, which means that she's been married.

05:41 Unwed Osage women wear three.

05:44 So when he asks...

05:45 How come you don't have a husband?

05:47 I'm a man. I want to know why a woman like you doesn't have a husband.

05:54 Molly's response is lightly touching her pins and straightening her shirt

05:58 to see if he knows that or not.

06:00 But she's not going to disclose it.

06:01 Of course, he's massively ignorant to all of this.

06:04 That was part of the research when we were talking with community

06:07 to figure out what this dynamic would have been,

06:09 because there's nobody living that knew these two.

06:11 We found a lot of what their dynamic in the marriage may have been

06:14 and the legacy that we heard about their kids.

06:16 Both their children, Cowboy and Lizzie, the ones who survived,

06:20 were known in the community for loving to have parties,

06:23 loving to host people.

06:24 So we wanted to create that dynamic,

06:26 like what would really be the attraction and flirtation here.

06:30 It's also just kind of fun watching, as Molly,

06:32 watching Ernest sweat a little bit.

06:34 We put a lot of thought into how Machiavellian this relationship was

06:38 as far as Ernest's manipulation,

06:41 or if it did start from a somewhat pure place.

06:45 From the research that we did, there was a connection between these two.

06:49 And that's the thing that I think we both tried to display in this scene,

06:53 that there was this connection.

06:55 We started to watch a lot of these Montgomery Cliff films.

06:57 Certainly the most influential was A Place in the Sun,

07:01 and that film really shaped the relationship,

07:04 along with The Heiress with Olivia de Havilland,

07:07 which was really the model for the Ernest and Molly relationship,

07:10 especially towards the end, where she starts to truly understand

07:14 deeply who this person is, and she makes that switch.

07:18 You know, you got a nice color scheme.

07:21 What color would you say that is?

07:27 My color.

07:29 And that is everything.

07:31 Thank you.

07:33 I'm going to write, "Four Killers of the Flower Moon."

07:38 Good job, Ernest.

07:40 That's Ernest writing.

07:42 Wait, let me--

07:44 Take a picture of that. That's actually beautiful.

07:46 I'm not going to-- There. I want to at least have my eyes open.

07:49 There.

07:50 Take that photo. That's cool.

07:52 This is our writing. This is Molly's work.

07:55 And this is Four Killers of the Flower Moon by Ernest,

07:58 because that's what his writing looked like in real life.

08:01 Can I get my phone?

08:03 We went back into character on this.

08:07 (laughing)

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