Yancey Red Corn walked the red carpet at Cannes with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio. He's also easy to find courtside at an OU game most Saturdays. Red Corn has spent decades building a life here that runs on two tracks at once: fully Osage, and fully Cleveland County.
The Red Corn Name
That dual life didn't start with him. His father, Charles Red Corn, made Norman home and spent his career working on behalf of Oklahoma tribes, eventually directing the Oklahoma Indian Association from right here in the county. He was also one of the founders of what's now the Jacobson House Native Art Center in Norman with help from Yancey's mother. Charles was also a writer, and what he wrote was an heirloom family history: his novel A Pipe for February is drawn from the 1920s Reign of Terror — the same period that took his own grandfather, Raymond Red Corn Sr. Decades later, both Martin Scorsese and author David Grann drew on that novel while making Killers of the Flower Moon; the film's opening scene, comes almost verbatim from its prologue.
Red Corn's mother, Jeri Redcorn, single-handedly revived Caddo pottery, an art form tribes had lost for generations. Her work now sits in the Smithsonian's collections, and one piece, "Intertwining Scrolls," hung in President Obama's Oval Office during his presidency. His sister is a psychiatrist and an accomplished beadwork, leatherwork, and ribbon-work artist, the same hands behind the beaded lapels and the traditional blanket her brother has worn to some of the biggest nights of his career.
Growing up in Cleveland County
When Billy Sims won the Heisman Trophy in 1978, Norman's schools were still built with open classrooms, and Red Corn remembers the whole building erupting when the principal announced it over the intercom. That's the Cleveland County he grew up in.
His family had moved to Norman in the mid-1970s, after stretches in Pawhuska and Anadarko and a period in Pennsylvania while his parents pursued graduate degrees at Penn State.
After Norman High, he pursued a political science degree at OU, playing rugby, then spent time in Washington, D.C., working at the Smithsonian, before returning to Norman for good in 1993.
Style with meaning
For the world premiere of Killers of the Flower Moon at the Cannes Film Festival — one of the most prestigious stages in international film, where the who's-who of Hollywood turns out every May — Red Corn wore a tuxedo, but layered his traditional Osage naming blanket over it, the same blanket his mother and sister made for his naming ceremony. He topped the look with a Stetson, a staple of his. The look landed him on GQ's Best Dressed ranking from the festival — so next time you're flipping through GQ, don't be surprised to find a familiar face from Cleveland County.
"You just don't think people really notice. It humbled me," he said.
One of his most meaningful moments on set came filming a speech with actor Jesse Plemons, much of it delivered as scripted,— "in the old days, we would fight these people"... Background extras, many of them Osage and some his own relatives, responded with approving shouts during the take, a moment Red Corn still describes as one of the most emotional of his career, and part of why the blanket felt like the right choice at Cannes.
Full Circles
Red Corn's son is a filmmaker in his own right, currently a Sundance Institute fellow. The father and son have also been developing an adaptation of A Pipe for February together — bringing the family history behind it, full circle through a third generation.
As for Red Corn himself: more acting, if the right roles come along — including, someday, a part that isn't a traditional Native role. In the meantime, the Pipe for February project remains the one he's most looking forward to seeing through.
From Norman to Cannes, Yancey Red Corn has lived a life honoring his people and his hometown with equal success.
Getting the part
Red Corn's casting wasn't a straight line. A friend, Chris Freihofer was casting for the film and had to convince Red Corn to even audition. He eventually agreed and auditioned for Killers of the Flower Moon in person during a casting call in Tulsa, then went through several additional rounds, including a self-taped audition filmed with the help of Freihofer, during the pandemic. He got the call in February 2021 that he'd been cast.
"My ad lib audition was even in the final cut — with words that I had lived," he said.
"We're still fighting that fight. I'm in the middle of it, trying to mediate."