Martin Scorsese made significant revisions to the screenplay of ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ out of concern that the film was primarily focused on white characters. Originally, Leonardo DiCaprio was set to play the lead investigator Tom White in the FBI’s investigation into the murders of Osage Native Americans in Oklahoma during the 1920s. However, Scorsese decided to completely overhaul the script and shift the focus onto the character of Ernest Burkhart and his marriage to an Osage woman named Mollie.
Scorsese explained his decision, stating, “After a certain point, I realized I was making a movie about all the white guys. Meaning I was taking the approach from the outside in, which concerned me.” As a result, DiCaprio’s role was changed to Ernest, while Jesse Plemons took on the role of Tom White as a supporting character.
Lily Gladstone, who plays Ernest’s wife Mollie, expressed surprise at the script changes that occurred after her initial audition. She shared, “Before the rewrites, I had three pages of some pretty mouthy dialogue. But I was struggling so much with the scenes that when COVID shut everything down and the project went quiet for a minute, I assumed that I’d blown the audition.”
About a year later, Gladstone was asked to have a Zoom meeting with Scorsese and was given new scenes that had fewer dialogues but provided more space for her character development. She described the revised script as a “scene that had minimal dialogue” and felt excited about the opportunity to play a more significant role.
Discussing the changes, she revealed, “I’d heard that the rewrites completely did a 180. Leo was supposed to be playing Tom White, Jesse Plemons’s character. The focus would’ve been the FBI, with Mollie and Ernest being part of the supporting storyline, instead of the central one.”