Lily Gladstone Set to Star as Mildred Bailey in New Film

Lily Gladstone has Spike Lee's vote at the Oscars for her performance in Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon and a new biopic in the works.

Deadline revealed that she will star as Mildred Bailey, who "A lot of people say ... was Billie Holiday before Billie Holiday was", Gladstone said.

Erica Tremblay is said to helm the project, having directed Gladstone in Fancy Dance, which was a Grand Jury Prize nominee at this year's Sundance Film Festival. The film follows a Native American hustler who kidnaps her niece from the child's white grandparents and sets out for the state powwow in hopes of keeping what is left of their family intact.

Gladstone said, "She's from Coeur d'Alene people from Idaho", and "they clearly erased her Indigeneity while she was famous and then since she passed away she got erased from history".

"They tried to label her the Great White jazz singer and when she pushed back on that then they started writing about her as a Black jazz singer, and she's like, neither", the Golden Globe nominee said.

While there's no definitive timeline for the Mildred Bailey biopic, Gladstone and Tremblay are passionate about telling this story.

They will be working on selling Fancy Dance in the meantime.