On Critics Choice Awards red carpet, Lily Gladstone says making 'Killers' came 'full circle'

"Killers of the Flower Moon" star Lily Gladstone felt history come full circle while filming the fact-based movie in Oklahoma.

The recent Golden Globe winner said Sunday on the Critics Choice Awards red carpet that she and her co-stars in Martin Scorsese's acclaimed film found themselves recreating some events a century to the day after they happened in real life.

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"The Osage Reign of Terror is so specific to what the Osage went through, yet it's understood so much by Indigenous people around the country. Everybody has a version of this story, of this guardianship program, where Native peoples were deemed incompetent of handling their own finances. So, that was a big history that we've all been impacted by historically," Gladstone said on the Critics Choice red carpet.

"There were moments, really, to the day of the 100-year anniversary of when some of these things were happening (when) we were on location shooting the exact same thing. ... While it's taken a very long time for it to reach such a public stage and for people to learn this, it feels like it came full circle. It's the story of all of these families, of this entire community, that's having the life that it's wanted to, I think."

Now available to rent or buy digitally, "Killers of the Flower Moon" has brought to light a dark and often-overlooked chapter of Oklahoma history: The 1920s "Reign of Terror," a series of brutal murders of oil-rich Osage Nation citizens.

Filmed in and around Osage County in 2021, Scorsese's 3 1/2-hour fact-based drama is adapted from David Grann's best-seller “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI."

Co-distributed by Apple Original Films and Paramount Pictures, "Killers of the Flower Moon" reunited Scorsese with two of his frequent collaborators who had never been in one of his feature films together: Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio ("The Revenant") and two-time Oscar recipient Robert De Niro ("Raging Bull," "The Godfather: Part II").

But Native American performer Gladstone, who is NiMíiPuu, or Nez Perce, and Siksikaitsitapi, or Blackfeet, has proven the film's awards season favorite for her powerful lead turn as Mollie Kyle Burkhart, a real-life Osage woman who was marked for death during the Reign of Terror.

During her historic acceptance speech for best actress in a drama at the Jan. 7 Golden Globe Awards, Gladstone shared that Hollywood filmmakers used to film Indigenous actors speaking English lines and then run the dialogue backward to depict Native languages in movies. She elaborated on that cinematic history on the Critics Choice red carpet.

"That was a pretty common one: They did that with a lot world languages. It was actually a practice, I guess, that was used in 'Star Wars, too.' ... They would use world languages in that and run it backwards to come up with alien languages," Gladstone said.

"As much as I'm a fan of it, it's a new time. There are a lot of stories that need to be told, and it's even better if people can tell them in their own tongue."

“Killers of the Flower Moon” earned 12 nominations for the 29th annual Critics Choice Awards, including best picture, best actress for Gladstone, best actor for DiCaprio, best supporting actor for De Niro, best director for Scorsese and best acting ensemble.

But the Western crime drama was shut out as "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie" dominated the Critics Choice winners list. Emma Stone received the best actress trophy for "Poor Things."

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: At Critics Choice Awards, Lily Gladstone shares 'full circle' feelings