Twenty years before landing an Oscar nomination for Killers of the Flower Moon, Lily Gladstone was visualizing winning an Academy Award.
In the lead-up to award season and following her award-winning role in the Martin Scorsese-directed film, a high school yearbook photo of Gladstone resurfaced with the superlative “Most Likely to Win an Oscar,” went viral.
In the photo, a young Gladstone and her classmate Josh Ryder were voted as the two that would be recognized for their talent. As Gladstone gets closer to fulfilling the superlative, Ryder has some words for his former classmate.
“I don’t think I had the capacity necessarily to think, or the understanding of what it would take to put oneself in that position to be nominated for an Oscar and Lily has done it,” Ryder said in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. “And it is extraordinary that she did such high-caliber work, and is getting recognized for it rightfully.”
Ryder said that the high school photo of him and Gladstone has reunited their former classmates adding, “Everybody’s so excited about this.”
For Ryder, if Gladstone wins the Oscar, he says, “It would be a storybook ending, for sure. And I mean, you know, maybe not the ending. She’s — we’re not even 40 yet. If she stays in the game, she might be able to rack up, you know, a few [Oscars].”
In an interview with USA Today, Gladstone said that her co-star Leonardo DiCaprio texted her the high school photo after her nomination was announced. Gladstone has also been in contact with Ryder, who has been an enormous support during this award season.
“He told me, ‘I don’t know if you know this, but all of this greatness in your life has brought our whole class back together,’ ” Gladstone said. “They’re having an Oscars watch party. They already scheduled it to happen in our old high-school theater, so I’m happy that I didn’t disappoint there.”
As a Native American actor, Gladstone has made history with her nomination. In an interview with Deadline, she said, “Why am I the first? Why did it have to take this long for me to be the first Indigenous North American? Most of the films that show up in these categories are shot on Indigenous land in North America, and it’s taken this long.”
