(L–R) Eugene Hernandez, Lily Gladstone, and Alia Shawkat attend the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Filmmaker Lodge on January 26, 2025, in Park City, UT. (Photo by Donyale West/Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)
By Sandy Phan
On January 26, bundled-up attendees braved the winter temperatures to stand in line at Filmmaker Lodge in hopes of seeing actors Lily Gladstone (The Wedding Banquet) and Alia Shawkat (Atropia) at Cinema Café.
Shawkat returns to the Festival, having acted in more than a dozen films that have screened here over the years, including Drift (2023) and Animals (2019). Oscar-nominated Gladstone is also no stranger to the Festival, having appeared in four projects that have premiered at Sundance, including Fancy Dance (2023) and Certain Women (2016).
Eugene Hernandez, director of the Sundance Film Festival and public programming at Sundance Institute, moderated the conversation, during which Shawkat and Gladstone shared thoughtful and deeply personal stories as well as funny anecdotes that resonated with the audience. Generous in their responses and stories, both artists created an intimate atmosphere with their openness.
Below are some of our favorite quotes from Gladstone and Shawkat. While you’re on the mountain, make sure to add The Wedding Banquet and Atropia to your watchlist. And remember — more tickets may become available for the sold-out screenings you want to see, so hop on the waitlist!
Can you talk about the early stage of your work? How did you make the decision to pursue the path that you’re on now?
Alia Shawkat: For better or worse, I was a child actor at the ripe age of 9. When I was a kid, I used to watch a show called All That. And I thought, “I can do that! I can be funny on TV.” I went to my mom, and she likes to tell the story about how aggressive I was. I said, “I want to be on TV.” She said, “Well, you have to go to L.A. and get an agent,” and I guess I said, “Well, let’s go to L.A. and get an agent.”
My mom was hesitant about it. To make a short story long, I started auditioning, and I got a Barbie commercial soon after auditioning. I went to a cattle call, and it’s very upsetting. A lot of kids were saying, “I want to go to soccer,” but the parents were like, “No, you don’t get to go to soccer.” Whereas I was dragging my mom, and she was like, “I don’t know. You have soccer,” and I said, “Fuck soccer. This is it, baby.” I connected to acting at a young age.
Within the same week of getting auditions, I auditioned for Three Kings, a David O. Russell film, to play an Iraqi immigrant, and my father is from Baghdad. My mom used to take me to auditions, but my dad came with me this time because I said, “You’re Iraqi. You come.” I was able to enter another state in the audition. It wasn’t a full audition because I was 9, so the casting director said, “I’m going to say things, and you can react.” Then I was crying because my mother got shot in front of me because it’s an intense film about the Iraq War. And I snapped out of it. I was able to slip into these emotional states, but I never took acting classes, but I enjoyed pretending and being able to get emotional release. And that’s where it kicked off.
Lily Gladstone: I was born and raised on my dad’s reservation in Montana. It’s a pretty remote and small place. My mom and dad said I always had the command of people, like a knowledge that people would watch me. I was born a watchable person … My favorite origin story that fused in my head what an actor was [was] when I was watching Ewoks: The Battle for Endor or Return of the Jedi. I’m a big Ewok fan. Yeah, that’s a pretty common thing in Indian country — we’re like, “That’s the Indigenous resistance!” I just wanted to live in the trees and defend what was good and be a cute little bear. My cousins and I found out when we got older that they were called Ewoks, and they were kids too. In Return of the Jedi, there’s an emotional moment when the Ewok dies. I was so distraught as a kid, and my parents told me, “It’s just an actor.” And I thought, “Okay, if I want to be an Ewok, then I have to be an actor!”
In Montana, there’s a beautiful children’s traveling theater that goes across the country … and they would come to my school once a year. After the first play I was in, people from the community were telling my parents, “We’re going to see her in Hollywood someday,” so I believed it, and my parents reinforced it.
I remember talking to my mom about emotional release, and I think that’s super addicting when you’re a teenager because you don’t know where to put your hormones and big feelings. It’s nice to have a script to blow your top off in a controlled setting. People aren’t going to stigmatize you or shame you for having emotions.
My mom admitted to me that when I was young, she thought about moving [to Los Angeles], but she knew how hard this industry is for kids. She wanted to make sure I was of sound mind and my prefrontal cortex was more formed. I always had the acting impulse.
(L–R) Eugene Hernandez, Lily Gladstone, and Alia Shawkat attend the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Filmmaker Lodge on January 26, 2025, in Park City, UT. (Photo by Donyale West/Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)
Acting requires confidence to be seen, but it also requires internal strength, a mental strength. Have you had to cultivate this from an early age?
Shawkat: Everyone learns differently. Sometimes you see actors who have never worked before, but their first performance in a film is unbelievable. They can tap into their vulnerabilities and share it willingly. And then there are other people who are trained for decades, and they have a very different type of control, where it’s like, you’re on set and you see they’re kind of like doctors. “Oh, you want me to dial this one and move my body this way?” Once, a director described to me that there are two types of actors. One, being like a storm. Coming on set, they’d be like, “I have everything, like emotions!” And the director is like, “Calm down; let’s capture it.” And other people who come in like surgeons.
It depends on the project, role, and the time in your life. Being a professional is very important to me, and respecting everyone on set is, but if I’m in a bad mood or I just had something distressing happen in my life, it’ll be present in the day. It’s going to affect the scene, even if it’s a comedy. I have to use the truth of what’s happening. That’s how I work. I think that’s why a lot of people who haven’t done it before see actors and think, “Oh, they’re very confident, and I feel like I know them,” and go up to them and touch them. But you were thinking, Oh, I was doing sitting alone.
How do you figure out what type of training you need?
Gladstone: I think work is the best training. When I was in high school, I took a technical camera class. But I think, to a degree, some characters show up more than others. Some characters are great on the page, and others are not. All of that is super subjective to the project and who you’re working with.
I think it’s understanding how focus sits in a frame. It’s hard to articulate when you’re trying to find a moment. Sometimes you can’t find it, and other times it’s about a small physiological thing that helps to find the moment.
What were the moments, roles, or people who have shaped you?
Gladstone: I think for some characters, you have to show up and give them something. And then you leave it there. But there are roles that are life-changing. Certain Women is a life-changing one, and I’ll carry it forever. Killers of the Flower Moon was one because it happened to real people, and I’ve held the hands of the granddaughter of my character. I’ve been in the community. I’ve maintained friendships in the community, and thinking about the role as a film, as a character, it almost feels blasphemous — that’s too heavy of a word, but the film was such an important thing, but the story belongs to a community that still lives with it. That’s reshaped and changed culture. So I think that one, because it was a real person. It was hard for me to try to think about it as performance. It’s history. The film itself is a continuation of history. That one would stay special.
As an actor, if I did take anything from Killers of the Flower Moon, it’s the ability to separate myself from it enough. You talk about when it is yours, when it is still yours, when it is the audience’s, and when it is up for interpretation. And that’s one that was hard to let out into the world because then everybody was judging it as a film, but they didn’t have the connection to the characters, to the people, and to the history. I had to bring everything to the role, but I never made it for myself.
Shawkat: That was so powerful. I’ll talk about Search Party. We shot the pilot and then we sold the pilot. I wouldn’t have gotten cast if it was already at the network. The creators put this amazing cast together. I would go to the writers room and talk about my character, Dory. This was the first time I had real creative involvement in something where I was like, this is mine. For my character, I’d say, “She wouldn’t do that,” or “I think this would happen.” The creators were welcoming to me, and it was over five seasons. And in that time, I definitely gained confidence; I know what makes a show, what works in a scene, and how to make it your own.
(L–R) Lily Gladstone and Alia Shawkat attend the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Filmmaker Lodge on January 26, 2025, in Park City, UT. (Photo by Donyale West/Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)
Tell us about the movie you’re in at Sundance.
Gladstone: I’m in The Wedding Banquet directed by Andrew Ahn. This is a reimagining of Ang Lee’s original movie — same name, ’90s. The original filled a necessary void in the ’90s. It follows the same farcical setup.
It’s set in Seattle. It’s a modern chosen family. It’s about two families living together and about what it looks like to create a family. I think Andrew is brilliant.
The most sparkly thing that drew me to the project is Bowen Yang. Sorry if this is TMI. It gets a little silly, but Bowen is okay with it. My mom and I were watching SNL, and it was Bowen’s first season, and my mom was like, “That’s my son!” My mom lost a child before me, and I’m a rainbow baby. She carried him long enough to know it was a boy. Then she got pregnant with me. So I’ve always grown up with the sense that I had a brother who’s been looking out for me. We were watching SNL and Bowen, and my mom said, “That’s my son! I don’t know how to explain it, but that’s my son.” When my mom claimed Bowen as her son in front of our family, we started to call each other star brother and star sister. He got to meet my mom, and she was so happy to hold her little boy. I loved Andrew’s work, but I just wanted to work with Bowen. He’s the loveliest human being.
The heart of my character in The Wedding Banquet is that she has had two failed attempts at IVF and needs a lifeline to try a third time. Conveniently, Bowen’s partner comes from a wealthy family from Korea who doesn’t know he’s gay, so there’s a bait-and-switch: If you marry me, I can get a green card, so I can stay in the U.S., and I’ll pay for your IVF.
Shawkat: My film is Atropia. This is a film that Hailey Gates wrote and directed. There are these real places, military places, where people go before they go off to war, these fake sets. It’s called the box, and they’re all over California. Our tax dollars pay for this. People in the army go there to train before they get sent off to Iraq.
Our film takes place in one of those places, and I play an American actress who takes her job too seriously, which I’m perfect for. She’s doing these reenactments, and she’s thinking, This is my chance! Someone is going to see me. Callum Turner is her romantic interest in it. He plays an American guy who loves being in the war, just got back from the Iraq war, and wants to go back. Our characters fall in love. I’m actually seven and a half months pregnant in the movie. We added it to the movie, and it’s not the main storyline, but it adds to my character, who wants to make it so badly in this fake world that’s actually recreating more trauma in this comedic way, even though it’s so upsetting to what they’re doing to people from where her family is from.
So she’s pregnant, and she’s trying to hide it because she’s not going to get the job anymore if she’s pregnant. She has this deep truth that she ignores because she wants to be seen. But she doesn’t want to be seen in the real way, but he sees that she’s pregnant, and they have this romance that can’t last because they’re in a weird summer camp; it’s a war hell. It’s inspired by M*A*S*H. It’s a war satire about the Iraq war. I really love it. My father is in the movie. He’s the mayor. My partner’s in it. I love it.
