Apple Gets A Bite Taken Out Of It In ‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’ Costume Designer Awards Dust-Up, Discrimination Allegations
One of the Assistant Costume Designers on the Martin Scorsese directed Killers of the Flower Moon is alleging that Apple Studios and the Costume Designers Guild worked hand in hand to erase her contribution to the multi-nominated Lily Gladstone, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro starring film. “Throughout the multitude of award nominations for KOTFM, Apple teamed up with West and CDG to promote the film and its costume design,” says Kristi Marie Hoffman of the studio, the guild and costume designer Jacqueline West in her six-claim complaint filed in LA Superior Court today (read it here). “Despite Hoffman being the primary ACD and completing most of the research and costume design for the film, the Defendants not only specifically excluded her involvement in its promotion but also completely ignored her work and instead represented to the public at large that the costume design work, her work, was the product of West and a consultant on the film, Julie O’Keefe,” the jury trial seeking document states.
Apple, Apple Studios, West and the Costume Designers Guild are all named as defendants in the complaint. A veteran costumer on Captain America: Civil War and 2015’s The Revenent among a slew of credits, Hoffman is seeking a variety of unspecified damages as well as an injunction against further promotion of the often brutal film based on David Gran’s 2017 book on the Osage murders of over 100 years ago.
Apple, who worked with the Osage Nation on their awards promotion and messaging for the film, and the CDG did not respond to request for comment from Deadline on the complaint.
However, with a 2022 settled e Equal Employment Opportunity Commission dispute with the defendants and dust-up over her notation in the film’s Costume Designers Guild Award in 2023, it is clear this situation wasn’t unknown to the parties.
