How ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Star Cara Jade Myers Ensured Anna Wasn’t a Caricature: ‘I Wasn’t Playing the Alcholism. I Was Playing the Pain’

variety.com:

Stuart Miller When the call went out for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Cara Jade Myers first read for the part of Rita and then for her sister Mollie, the focus of the film.

Finally, she auditioned for the third sister, Anna, who is the most independent and the most troubled, her mother’s favorite but also a hard-drinking partier. “She was almost larger than life in that character, with a bravery and an unpredictable quality,” says Rene Haynes, who was the film’s Indigenous casting director. “She’s also smart and can think on her feet.”(Haynes says Zoom bombing a meeting with Myers and her manager to tell her she’d landed the role was “one of the most moving moments of my career,” while Myers says she wishes she’d recorded it. “I just started smiling and sobbing — it was probably the most ugly cry.”) While Myers was raised in Arizona, she is a member of the Kiowa and Wichita tribes, which she says are like sister tribes to the Osage, the tribe that’s the focus of “Killers”; all are based in Oklahoma.

Still, she took nothing for granted, putting pressure on herself to really capture the character’s nuance. “The Osage treasure Anna and her sisters and their stories — they are real people,” she says. “I didn’t want her to be a caricature.” (Working with three “absolute film legends” only doubled her determination not to be “the weakest link.”) In addition to reading David Grann’s book that Martin Scorsese adapted, she read “A Pipe for February,” a novel telling the story from the perspective of an Osage character (author Charles Red Corn is a member of the Osage nation).

Beyond the books and online research, Myers immersed herself in the community.“They live and breathe their culture and traditions and I would go to their.