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

Look what I subconsciously did here.

I gave you devil horns. Yeah, you gave me

a devil horn and a halo.

Yep, look at that.

[Leo] Look at that.

Hi, I'm Lily Gladstone.

And I'm Leonardo DiCaprio.

And this is Notes on a Scene,

Killers of the Flower Moon.

[gentle western music]

You live in this house just, just with your mother?

I take care it for her.

And you live with your uncle?

Yes. Yes. Mhm.

You know him?

Since I can remember. Hm.

He's a nice man.

I remember this was one of our first scenes that we did,

and it was obviously the initial flirtation process

in getting to know one another.

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.

Ernest is a little bit in the hot seat

getting the 20 questions.

Mhm, you see in Mollie's eyes,

I think that she knows what she's dealing with

to a certain extent.

But you know, he seems somewhat easygoing.

I know there's certain elements to him

that aren't perfect, but he's-

What man is?

[both laugh]

Point taken.

I remember how much Jackie

talked about your costume through here.

See like the little kind of rough edges.

Clearly this is your only coat.

It's worn right there. Mhm.

[Lily] Your center part... [laughs]

I remember we talked about the center part,

the side part, where he becomes more of a dandy.

He accumulates himself into the household.

He wants to look upper class.

And then brilliant Sian,

still giving you your little cabby like hair.

Here, I give you devil horns

Yeah, you gave me and an angel halo.

a devil horn and a halo.

Yep, look at that.

[Leo] Look at that.

Jack Fisk and the whole art department,

including Addie Roanhorse, a local...

A lot of the things that you see belong

to Osage families and come from this era.

These red Spode dishes come from the RedCorn family.

Every year, when they host people at their camp

and feed people during their dances in the summer,

they would use this set.

But this summer they had rented plates. [laughs]

So, now these dishes, this very cup

that Leo's drinking out of, is back in circulation

with the RedCorns and is feeding people every summer.

I forgot that.

Man, you have a good memory. Yeah.

Why did you come here?

For what?

To live here?

Yes. I, I live here.

Why? I love that,

when this scene was written out.

It was, I think originally,

accommodating for the language barrier.

And then we decided Mollie was way more fluent in English.

You know, we're so used to seeing Indians in film

speaking in broken English and not really following fully.

But here it's like Ernest is the one

who's kinda not tracking.

He's not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Very early on in the production actually,

I was considering making him even slower

because he couldn't really put a sentence together.

He really couldn't.

He was in the testimony and in his writing, I was like,

Wow, either this man's illiterate

or there's something missing there.

But the more we investigated all of this, yes,

of course he was intricately a part

of this manipulation process.

But at this point, we're keeping it

a little bit of a gray area, I'd say.

Why?

Oh, uh, for my uncle.

Hm. I work with him.

And your brother is Bryan?

Byron, that's right. Byron.

There is no one way that this man's name

is recorded in history.

The community remembers him as both Bryan and Byron,

and I forget which is which.

When they speak about him, they say one way,

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

which was pretty common back then.

Are you scared of him?

My brother? Who?

Your uncle.

Well, no.

No, he's a...

He's the king of the Osage Hills.

He's the nicest man in the world.

I know, if you cross him, what he could do.

Hmm.

No, I'm... [clears throat]

I'm my own man. I do my own work.

Bullshit. [laughs]

I do my own work.

He does no work.

Is it just the fact that he's a little bit slow and dim

that he doesn't know anything about his uncle

or the fact that he talks about

the fact that he's a businessman

when he really has no business.

[Lily laughs]

He's barely a cab driver at that point.

But he's putting on a show.

He's peacocking for her.

He's making himself out Like what?

to be something that he's not.

I'm a businessman.

Thanks.

[match flicks]

There you go.

[tobacco sizzles]

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

and there are these bookmarked scenes

where we're initially starting to flirt.

We share tobacco and it's like,

Oh yeah, I smoke.

You know, we're gonna share everything.

Yes, we have a lot in common.

And at the end where I sort of have to go back on my word

and the trial and I'm completely manipulating

and lying to her saying that, No, I was beaten by the FBI.

You know, none of the stuff is true about my...

Lying again.

I was lying again.

And we start to share tobacco. Mhm.

Mollie is wearing two Wabonka pins,

which means that she's been married.

Unwed Osage women wear three.

So when he asks...

How come you don't have a husband?

I'm a man.

I wanna know why a woman like you doesn't have a husband.

Mollie's response is lightly touching her pins

and straightening her shirt, That's right.

to see if he knows that or not.

But she's not gonna And of course,

disclose it.

He's massively ignorant to all of this.

That was part of the research

when we were talking with community

to figure out what this dynamic would've been.

'Cause there's nobody living that knew these two.

We found a lot of what their dynamic

and the marriage may have been in the legacy

that we heard about their kids.

Both their children, Cowboy and Lizzie,

the ones who survived, were known in the community

for loving to have parties, loving to host people.

So we wanted to create that dynamic,

like what would really be the attraction

and flirtation here.

And it's also just kinda fun watching...

You know, as Mollie watching Ernest sweat a little bit.

We put a lot of thought into how

Machiavellian this relationship was

as far as Ernest's manipulation,

or if it did start from a somewhat pure place.

From the research that we did,

there was a connection between these two.

And that's the thing that I think we both tried

to display in this scene, that there was this connection.

We started to watch a lot of these Montgomery Clift films.

Certainly the most influential was A Place in the Sun.

And that film really shaped the relationship

along with the The Heiress with Olivia de Havilland,

which was really the model

for the Ernest and Mollie relationship,

especially towards the end where she starts

to truly understand deeply who this person is.

And she makes that switch. [fingers snap]

You know, you got, you got nice color skin.

What, what color would you say that is?

My color.

And that is everything.

Thank you.

I'm gonna write...

[Laughs] Oh no.

For Killers of the Flower Moon.

Good job, Ernest.

That's Ernest's writing.

Wait, let me-

Hey, look, look, take a picture of that.

That's actually beautiful. I'm not gonna get there.

I wanna at least have my eyes open.

There. Take that photo.

That's cool. [Lily laughs]

This is our writing.

This is Mollie's work.

And this is for Killers of the Flower Moon by Ernest.

'Cause that's what his writing looked like in real life.

Can I get my phone? [Lily laughs]

We went back into character on this.