MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — Lily Gladstone takes on a different persona in a gripping new Hulu series that began streaming Wednesday.
The 2004 Mountlake Terrace High School graduate plays a police officer in the true-crime drama “Under the Bridge.”
She appears about 15 minutes into the first episode, clad in gym shorts and a muscle shirt, pounding a punching bag in a garage gym with her police captain dad. She is otherwise mostly seen in her blue uniform.
Gladstone, 37, was nominated for an Oscar for “Killers of the Flower Moon.” She earned Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe awards for her role in the movie, with her performance described as “quietly powerful” and “stunning, subtle.”
In “Under the Bridge,” Gladstone is powerful, but not so quiet. She is a bold, determined cop who swears.
The Hulu series is based on author Rebecca Godfrey’s 2005 book about the 1997 murder on Vancouver Island of 14-year-old Reena Virk. The teen went to a party with friends, who were convicted of killing her under a bridge.
Gladstone’s role as officer Cam Bentland is a composite character. In the eight-episode miniseries, she teams up with Godfrey, who has returned to her hometown of Victoria, British Columbia, to do research for a novel, coincidentally around the time of the teen’s murder. Godfrey is played by Riley Keough, whose new movie “Sasquatch Sunset” opens this week.
In a recent Forbes interview about the Hulu series, Gladstone said: “I felt like, kind of like ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ did, which I hope is the precedent for this genre, that we strip genre out of it and make true crime about the humans that are affected. We get to re-focus it and have empathy for who the victim is and then take the opportunity to have these conversations about the systemic inequities that perpetuate from the society that allows things like this to happen.”
In “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Gladstone is Mollie Burkhart, whose family members were killed in the Osage murders in the early 20th century in Oklahoma.
The movie is 3 hours, 26 minutes long. Each Hulu episode is about 48 minutes. It is intended only for mature audiences, according to the Hulu warning.
Another warning: Only two episodes dropped Wednesday. So you have to wait a week for more.
Andrea Brown: 425-339-3443; abrown@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @reporterbrown.
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