This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Lily Gladstone has been in over a dozen films, including Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women, and she's been on

reservation dogs created by Sterlin Harjo. But making a life as an actor, it's just not an easy

thing, and Gladstone said she was applying for seasonal work at the Department of Agriculture

studying insects when she heard from a certain Martin Scorsese.

Scorsese eventually cast her as a lead in killers of the Flower Moon.

The film concerns a grisly series of murders that took place in the Osage Nation after oil was discovered there.

Gladstone plays Molly Burkart, an Osage woman married to a white man named Ernest, played

in the film by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Gladstone is nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and that's a historic first

for a native woman.

She spoke recently with Michael Schulman, a staff writer at the New Yorker.

Your high school yearbook from Mount Lake Terrace High School has made the rounds online,

so I know that you were voted most likely to win an Oscar.

There's no question that's true.

It's really sweet.

My graduating class and then a lot of people that were in the same drama program,

they're reuniting to watch the Oscars in our old high school theater.

It's really touching.

Well, so then you went and studied acting and directing at the University of Montana.

I'm curious, when you got out what your early career was like, what kind of roles were you auditioning for? What were you getting?

...