Lily Gladstone is opening up about their decision to use “she/they” pronouns. The Killers of the Flower Moon actor told People in a recent interview that using these pronouns is “partly a way of decolonizing gender for myself.”
Gladstone grew up on the Blackfeet Nation reservation in Montana. Her father is of Blackfeet and Nimiipuu heritage and her mother is white. “In most Native languages, most Indigenous languages, Blackfeet included, there are no gendered pronouns. There is no he/she, there’s only they,” the Certain Women actor told the outlet.
They also shared their thoughts on the use of the word “actress” for women actors. “I think it’s really cool that we’re seeing ‘performer’ and we’re seeing everybody brought in together. I do feel that historically having gendered categories has helped from keeping women actors from a lot of erasure because I think historically people just tend to honor male performances more,” the Unknown Country actor said.
“I know a lot of actresses who are very proud of the word ‘actress’ or are very proud of being an actress,” Gladstone added. “I don’t know, maybe it’s just an overly semantic thing where I’m like, if there’s not a ‘director-ess,’ then there shouldn’t be actresses. There’s no ‘producer-ess,’ there’s no ‘cinematographer-ess.'”
