Lily Gladstone's new Apple TV+ movie, Fancy Dance, is a poignant, multi-layered drama that tackles important themes like American Indigenous culture, family dynamics, grief and the epidemic of missing Native women. Still, despite the heavy subject matter, Gladstone and her co-stars had some fun behind the scenes.
I sat down with the 37-year-old actress to discuss her powerful new film, and she revealed that there were quite a few standout moments she enjoyed working on.
When asked which scene resonated with her the most, Gladstone revealed that she enjoyed the coming-of-age storyline, where her character Jax's niece, Roki (played by Isabel Deroy-Olsen), gets her first period (or 'moon'). She told me, "The three of the scenes that make up that moment were so wonderful to shoot. I guess four if you include the diner too, just that segment. It's such a preciousness there. The walls are closing in on these two. It's like, the worst possible time that she can be getting her first moon. But when it happens, it takes the time it needs. Jax is like, 'Okay, this is what we're doing now.' It's the core of what this matrilineal and matriarchal love and story of survival is."
She continued, "I love that it also carries this really specific, very intimate, very loving moment. It gives it the space it needs. It's like a reprieve for both of them around her first period, and there's humor in it. And Roki, she's not taught to be ashamed of her period or to hide it. She's proud of it. She's excited to share with a stranger that it's her time now, she's a woman now."
Another memorable moment for the star involved Roki and Jax running through the cornfield, which turned out to be one of the most difficult to film. She said, "[Deroy-Olsen and I] had a stupid amount of fun shooting that one. You know, it's like [we had] no business having so much fun shooting such a hard scene. But it was our fourth day of shooting and we figured out how we work together. We're similar performers in that like saving it for the scene. So we were running the lines to make sure that we really had the flow of it. It was just to run the text and the language, and we were doing our silly valley girl voices, or silly Willow voices."
"I called her 'Wilson' because that scene where Tom Hanks, where Wilson is drifting away in the water from him, is kind of what it felt like when she's running away from me in the cornfield," Gladstone continued, referring to the 2000 survival drama, Cast Away. "So I started to call like, 'Wilson! Wilson!' Then she just became Wilson. That was her nickname through the rest of the shoot. So it was fun to shoot these things, and it was fun to work with somebody who has a similar approach and is not going to get thrown by being goofy, is actually going to help protect the integrity of the drama of the scene."
It's no wonder the co-stars had such an authentic relationship throughout the film. Gladstone said, "Having those little moments is really what strengthened our bond. You know, it's like, this is my actual niece now."
Fancy Dance premieres on Apple TV+ this Friday, June 28, so mark your calendar.
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