On the heels of Lily Gladstone’s historic Oscar nomination for Killers Of The Flower Moon, the actor is keeping busy in between their recent critically acclaimed series Under The Bridge and one of the latest projects on the 2024 movie schedule, Fancy Dance. Written and directed by Erica Tremblay, Fancy Dance centers on Gladstone’s Jax as she looks for her missing sister and takes close care of her niece Roki (Isabel DeRoy-Olson). Along with the movie shedding light on an unfortunately common occurrence in the Native community, it follows the Oscar nominee as a queer woman as well.
When CinemaBlend chatted with Erica Tremblay about working alongside Lily Gladstone, who has previously talked openly about going by they/she pronouns herself, the filmmaker spoke about crafting the queer indigenous role of Jax. In Tremblay’s words:
Tremblay is a Native American woman who identifies as queer and worked closely with Fancy Dance’s lead to authentically portray the indigenous LGBTQ+ community through the role of Jax. As the writer/director shared, she wanted the character to not be purely defined by their sexuality, but very much represent it.
Tremblay decided to do so by including a brief scene that implies Jax and a sex worker being consensually intimate. The filmmaker also said this:
Prior to their collaboration on Fancy Dance, Tremblay told us that the pair worked together on a short film called Little Chief, and they were excited to make a full-length feature film together. Since the two of them are indigenous women, they were excited to tell a story about their community – specifically by speaking about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women epidemic. As Tremblay also shared:
Fancy Dance’s road to release has not been a straightforward one. The movie originally premiered at Sundance over a year ago, and it did not receive distribution rights for over a year after its debut, leading Tremblay and her co-writer Miciana Alise to write a THR guest column on the subject. Then, Apple landed the global rights earlier this year.
Fancy Dance is now playing in select theaters and can be streamed for those with an AppleTV+ subscription this Friday, June 28.