Awards season is over, and with it, the end of Lily Gladstone’s campaign for Killers of the Flower Moon. I have a feeling this Best Actress result will be litigated for a while, but Lily Gladstone’s career is already moving on. She is booked, she is busy, she has a shot at an Emmy.
The teaser for Under the Bridge, a limited series based on the late Rebecca Godfrey’s book of the same name, was released by Hulu during the Oscars’ telecast. The teaser touts “Emmy Award Nominee” Riley Keough and “Academy Award Nominee” Lily Gladstone as the series stars.
Godfrey’s book details the 1997 murder of fourteen-year-old Reena Virk at the hands of fellow teens in British Columbia, Canada. It’s one of the most prominent “moral panic” cases of the last 30 years, in which the horror of the crime—kids murdering one of their own for no reason except maybe hate crimes—prompted everyone to hyper-focus on the circumstances including bullying, racism, xenophobia, religious discrimination, gangs, and so-called “girl violence”, as it was a group of six girls, and one boy, who attacked Reena. There was never any real motive given, not that anything could really explain what happened, but it’s part of what makes Reena’s story so memorable, just how f-cked up it is.
The teaser shows Keough as Rebecca Godfrey, and Gladstone as police officer Cam Bentland, tasked with finding Reena when she goes missing. It looks appropriately tense and moody, with an emphasis on tough girls making threatening silencing gestures. As I wrote when the project was announced over a year ago, possible racial motivations for the crime were largely dismissed, and I hope the series digs into that. People were so anxious to blame gang culture and rap music (for “glorifying” gang culture) they just ignored that Reena was potentially targeted for being different. She was Indo-Canadian, she was a Jehovah’s Witness, but back in the 1990s, people were way more anxious to blame media for violence than systemic discrimination and othering.
Under the Bridge looks good, and since it airs in April, it will just squeak under the wire for Emmy consideration this summer (shows have to air six episodes by May 31, 2024, to qualify). That means Lily could be an Oscar nominee and an Emmy nominee in the same year. That would be very cool and would go a long way to putting the Oscars thoroughly in the rearview.
The concern, always, is that there simply aren’t the same opportunities for women of color as their white peers. Lupita Nyong’o’s presence at the Oscars this year reminded everyone that in a decade, she has not had another role to put her in Oscar contention. Meanwhile, Jennifer Lawrence bagged four nominations and one win in five years, and in the same decade Lupita was an Academy Award winner, Emma Stone got four acting nominations and two wins.
At the after-parties, many pundits said Lily Gladstone should've gone supporting. But there's more to a film career than winning an Oscar. By going lead, Lily told Hollywood to treat her like a lead. And she just booked another lead, which many supporting winners struggle to do.
— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) March 11, 2024
As Kyle says, there is more to a career than an Oscar, but even WITH an Oscar, it can be hard for women of color to advance. I’m not even sure the issue is so much lead versus supporting roles and categories, because Emma Stone’s first Oscar nomination was for Best Supporting Actress, and she had no problem jumping to lead roles/nominations. Like, two things can be true. Nominations and trophies can make the industry view a person a certain way, AND it can be a steeper climb for women of color. Anyway, Lily is just a month away from her next big thing, and beyond that, she will star in Charlie Kaufman’s adaptation of The Memory Police. Stay booked, Lily!
Here's Lily at the Vanity Fair party last night.
