Dear Gossips,

The strikes this year were important, both for the people trying to have viable careers in the film industry, and as part of a larger labor movement in the US, but one of the sort-of bummers was that Lily Gladstone didn’t get her big moment when Killers of the Flower Moon opened in October.

However, now that the strike(s) are over, she can talk about her work again, and as a front-running Oscar contender, she’s getting invited everywhere.

She’s one of the cover stars of Variety’s Power of Women feature this month, and was at the Power of Women event in LA last night.

In her profile, Lily talks about the response to Killers of the Flower Moon from within the Native community, which wasn’t always glowing.

But she compares the film and its perspective to a Blackfeet man and a flower, and the tangled roots that make the flower.

“If this flower is a story, then all of these roots are the different versions,” she says. “That’s how reality is shaped. The universe is the shape of all of these different stories, even if they conflict.”

That’s an eloquent way of saying there are different versions and perspectives of events like those depicted in Killers of the Flower Moon, and this is just one version of that story.

My worry is that because Martin Scorsese is MARTIN SCORSESE, no one will feel the “need” to revisit Flower Moon, since Scorsese already made a good movie out of it. His should be the first word, not the last word, but I worry that is not how it will work out.

But, right now, Lily’s reason for being at this event and doing interviews like this, beyond the escalation of her career, is her Oscar campaign.

For a lot of people, this is their get-to-know-her period with Lily Gladstone, though like me, Martin Scorsese noticed her in Certain Women. Some of us have been at this party for years and the rest of you are late!

This is a good introduction for the latecomers to the Lily Gladstone party. Not just her work in Flower Moon, but her thoughtfulness, dry humor, her passion for independent cinema and diplomatic handling of the natural divide in responses to Flower Moon. As the official kickoff of the Lily Gladstone Oscar Run, it’s a strong start.

Live long and gossip,

Sarah